Stuffed Mushrooms? Yes, please!!

Continuing with the mushroom theme, I'd like to share with everyone a copycat recipe I found for Olive Garden's stuffed mushrooms. If you haven't had the Olive Garden's stuffed mushrooms, you're missing out. They are fricken fantastic! There's clams and cheese and goodness in those scrumptious bites... just thinking about them is making my mouth water.

Olive Garden's Stuffed Mushrooms Copy Cat Recipe

8 – 12 Fresh Mushrooms
1 (6 oz.) Can Clams (drained and finely minced) (save 1/4 cup of clam juice for stuffing)
1 Green Onions (chopped finely, about 1 Tbsp.)
1 Egg (beaten)
1/2 tsp. Minced Garlic
1/8 tsp. Garlic Salt
1/2 C. Italian Style Bread Crumbs
1tsp. Oregano Leaves
1 Tbsp. Melted Butter (cool)
2 Tbsp. Finely Grated Parmesan Cheese
1 Tbsp. Finely Grated Romano Cheese
2 Tbsp. Finely Grated Mozzarella Cheese ( for stuffing )
1/4 C. Finely Grated Mozzarella Cheese (for garnish)
1/4 C. Melted Butter
Wash and remove stems from mushrooms, pat dry. In mixing bowl place clams, onions, garlic salt, minced garlic, soft butter and oregano. Mix through and blend well. Add Italian bread crumbs, egg, clam juice and blend. Stir cheeses in clam stuffing and mix well.
Place clam mixture inside mushroom cavity and slightly mound clam mixture. You should be able to stuff between 8 – 12 mushrooms depending on the size of mushrooms.
Place mushrooms in slightly oiled baking dish. Pour melted butter over mushrooms. Cover and place in a preheated oven at 350 decrease for about 35 – 40 minutes. Remove cover and sprinkle freshly grated mozzarella cheese on top and pop back in oven just so the cheese melts slightly, garnish with freshly diced parsley.

I recently made this recipe and it is amazing. I just used canned parmesan cheese instead of the 2 TBSP of parmesan and 1 TBSP of Romano cheeses. I'm pretty sure I used way more than 2 TBSP of mozarella as well... The recipe is courtesy of http://www.copykat.com/2009/02/02/olive-garden-stuffed-mushrooms/

Mushroom Sauce

Lately I've become a little bit obsessed with mushrooms. They seem to be finding their way into all of my favorite recipes, and sauces are no exception. I thought it would be fun to share my "secret" to making a fabulous mushroom sauce that can be tweaked to work with whatever you're making.

First of all, make your sauce in whatever pan you've cooked your protein in. I don't know why, but pouring all of the drippings into a saucepan doesn't work as well as just making the sauce in your roasting pan or skillet or whatever you're using.

What I like to do is pour the clear layer off the drippings in the pan, saving only the actual drippings from the protein. Then I add in a couple of TBSP of flour, not really enough to make a roux, but enough to really thicken the mass. Make sure you work out all the lumps at this point. To that I add in between 1 1/2 - 2 cups of broth. If you're cooking chicken, use chicken broth; if you're cooking beef, use beef broth, etc. Use a whisk to stir incorporate the broth to the fat/flour mixture. At this point you should add in the mushrooms (and onions?? Yum!) then let the mixture simmer while the onions cook. You can add cooked or raw mushrooms or even canned mushrooms. It's your choice, they all work very well. When the mushrooms are cooked, add in some herbs (use the same types of herbs you used in the main dish) and a dash of milk if you want to make it into a cream sauce. The longer you cook the sauce, the thicker it will get. It's really that simple!

PRODUCT REVIEW: Hamilton Beach 6 Cup Food Processor

On Monday I went to Target and bought my very first food processor. After reading a lot of reviews, I chose the Hamilton Beach 6 cup food processor for just under $35. I've had a week to use it and so far I'm pretty impressed. The bowl is large enough to handle all of the jobs I've thrown at it so far, and the motor is powerful enough to make pie dough in just a few seconds. My only complaint is that the person who designed the machine was left-handed and didn't actually know anything about cooking. The controls are on the left side of the machine, so you have to cross over the bowl to operate them with your right hand. It's also a sort of rounded knob that you twist versus a button like most food processors. I find that most of the time my hands are too wet/gunky while I'm cooking to be able to grip the knob. I would have preferred buttons. However, the cheap price more than makes up for the poor design and I'm willing to wipe my hands off in order to save a little money. Lastly, the food processor comes with a slicing/grating disk. You may as well just throw it away, because there's a good 1/2 inch between the food chute and the disk, so most of the food just bounces around in that half in space instead of getting sliced/grated.