Goat Cheese Stuffed Mushrooms

My sister came for a quickie visit to Puerto Rico… And to make things easier on her and my BIL, we decided to cook up some appetizer-type food and tell everyone if they wanted to see baby Ale, all they needed to do was to stop by my mom’s house.

I didn’t want to cook something and have it re-heated… I though stuffed mushrooms would be perfect because I could stuff them at home and cook them in batches as people would visit and decided they wanted something to nibble on.

The idea worked out perfectly because I did way too many… and we ended up dividing the leftovers between my mom and I for lunch the next day. Great make ahead idea…

GOAT CHEESE STUFFED MUSHROOMS

1 large package of white stuffing mushrooms

1/2 medium onion, chopped finely

2 garlic cloves, minced or grated on a microplane

2 sprigs of fresh thyme

5 sun-dried tomatoes, chopped in small pieces – make sure they’re made without sulfites as a preservative

1/4 cup of vegetable broth

½ cup whole wheat breadcrumbs

1 cup of shredded parmesan cheese, organic preferably- divided

½ cup crumbled goat cheese

1/2 cup of loosely-packed fresh flat-leaf parsley, chopped finely

Salt and Pepper

Olive Oil

1. Clean the mushrooms well using a damp paper towel. Remove the stems and chop them into small pieces and set aside. Reserve the caps for later use.
2. In a small saucepan, heat the vegetable broth to a simmer and add the sundried tomatoes. Turn off the stove and let the tomatoes just sit in the hot broth for a few minutes to help them reconstitute a bit.
3. Meanwhile, in a medium skillet, pour a little olive oil and sauté the onions, garlic and the mushrooms stems you already chopped. Cook until the mushrooms are browned. Season with the thyme, stripping the leaves from the stems, salt and pepper. Allow the mixture to cook some more to evaporate a bit, about 5 more minutes. Remove from pan into a bowl and allow cooling a bit.
4. In a separate bowl, mix together the cooled mushroom stem/onion mixture with the sun-dried tomatoes, breadcrumbs, goat cheese, ½ the parmesan cheese, and chopped fresh parsley. Drizzle some olive oil if you see the mix a bit dry… but chances are it’s not.
5. Preheat oven to 425F.
6. In a large baking dish drizzled with a bit of olive oil, place all the mushrooms stuffed with the mixture we just made. Don’t push the stuffing too much into the mushrooms cavity, but do heap any additional stuffing generously on top of mushrooms. No need to discard or leave any stuffing for future use.
7. Take the extra parmesan we saved and add a small mound on top of each mushrooms. I usually drizzle a bit of olive oil and sprinkle some additional salt and pepper to season the mushrooms themselves.
8. Bake for about 20 minutes, until the mushrooms looked cooked and cheese on top is golden brown.

Serve immediately…

Tags: food, Goat Cheese, mushrooms, parmesan cheese, sun-dried tomatoes, vegetarian