Pondering Portobello Possibilities

I am craving stuffed portobello mushrooms after stuffing some large portobellos a couple months back. At that time I followed a Trader Joe's recipe using a black bean, bruscetta and ricotta cheese mixture topped with white cheese and baked in the oven for a half hour or so. They were delicious!

HOWEVER, I was craving something a little different so I bought "baby" stuffing porobellos. They probably have a clever term like "portobellini" or something like that but I'm not aware of it so I refer to them as "babies". I did a little research on stuffing portobellos in general and really just discovered you can stuff these plumper’s with just about anything. I pondered making pizza portobellos but delayed that experiment for another night, a night when I'm stuffing the large guys. So I recruited my assistant chef, my wonderful husband, and started the evening's dinner experiment. Below are the details of what we did. Unfortunately (or not depending how you look at it!) I was so excited; I forgot to take pictures before, during and after!

WARNING: I usually go off gut instinct for measuring and cooking time so below is rough estimates of what I think I did. :D

INGREDIENTS:

*some olive oil for sautéing of veggies
*baby stuffing portobellos - I used four but prepared ingredients could stuff six.
*some stalks of fresh asparagus - chopped chunky
*1 medium sized onion - chopped fine (I used yellow)
*part of a green pepper - chopped fine (you could use more, it's just all I had left)
*1 clove of garlic - minced (I love garlic and used a clove from a "colossal" garlic so if you are using smaller cloves, I would use two
*two fresh basil leaves, chopped up semi fine
*1 tsp of dried oregano
*some fire roasted peppers (I used red and yellow)
*handful of pine nuts
*1 cup quinoa
*sea salt and pepper to taste

I prepared the quinoa. I used a rice cooker with just plain quinoa and water, nothing else added...this time!

We then heated our olive oil in a pan and added the green pepper; onion, garlic and asparagus, sautéed for a few minuets then added in the roasted peppers, sautéed a bit more and then added basil, oregano and pine nuts. My desired result of the sautéed veggies was to have them sautéed but still a fresh crunch to them. I timed it so that the veggies and quinoa would be done about that same time so after the quinoa was finished, I added to my veggies.

In the meantime my assistant chef, the best assistant chef in the world had helped me cut some of our veggies and had removed the stems and gills of our babies. I brushed some olive oil on the bottom of the pan we were using and placed the babies on the pan as they waited to be stuffed.

We then stuffed, and stuffing we did! I packed as much of the veggie/quinoa mixture I could into each little guy. Like I said earlier, we only used four but there was enough mixture to stuff at least six. I then brushed the top of each with a little more olive oil and put them in the oven. I believe they ended up cooking for about 12 or 15 minuets.

While we waited for them to cook, my assistant chef set the table, poured the wine and then we enjoyed a kitchen appetizer, munching the rest of the unused mixture with a spoon, alternating bites between each other. Tasty even with out the portobellos, haha.

While they finished their final moments in the oven, I considered what I I would use to stuff my next batch and am thinking maybe some broccoli and sesame seeds w/some sort of garlic and soy sauce mixture. Or some variation of a cheesy pizza portobello which is what I was thinking of originally.

I checked the oven one last time and decided they were baked well enough, so I took them out and let them rest for a minute. Now time to finally sit down and feast, we each got two! The finished product was mouth watering yummy and watching my husband enjoy the dish was eye watering wonderful!

Yum to cooking, food and husbands!
!