Sunday 20 January 2013

Mushroom and Walnut Pâté and Creamy Mushroom Soup!

So I had lots of mushrooms to use up and so I came up with the ingenious idea of making mushroom pâté! I looove mushrooms and I love pâté mm. So I looked up a few recipes for ideas of how to make it and devised my own. A lot of them used walnuts as well, and since I had them in the cupboard I decided to include them too.

Since I couldn't work out what to have for dinner I decided to be even MORE  of a genius and be economical with my cooking, using some of the mushroom mixture to make soup and some to make pâté! ALL the mushroom-y goodness!


The mushroom mixture!
(Sorry about the pic... my camera is shockingly awful when it comes to focusing)

To make this fabulous mixture you will need:

1 Onion
1 box of mushrooms
2- 3 cloves of minced garlic
Fresh thyme 
Dried/ fresh oregano
Salt
Pepper
Lemon juice
Olive oil
Unsweetened soy milk
A small handful of walnuts (only needed if you are making the pâté, not the soup)
1 tsp of plain flour (only needed if you want to make the soup!)

Method:

Chop up the onion really small and saute it in a large pan with a drizzle of olive oil. While this is cooking, chop up the mushrooms also really small (each piece as big as a bean?) and add to the onions. Sprinkle in some oregano, and chop up a healthy serving of thyme (to taste) and add that in, along with the minced garlic. Add a pinch of salt, some pepper and a taste of lemon. Try it. Is it tasty? Good! 

When the mixture is nicely soft and cooked through, turn off the heat. 



You now have your mushroom mixture! Yay!


Creamy Mushroom Soup Recipe



If you want to make soup, take a soup bowl and fill about half the bowl with the mushroom mixture. 

Cover the mushroom mixture with soy milk and then pour in some boiling water until the mushrooms are "floating". You can use just milk/ just water depending on your preferences. Then add the tsp of flour. 

Give it a good old mix and a quick blend to combine it- feel free to blend till smooth if you want a smooth soup. Then microwave on high for about 5 mins, stirring at 2.5 minutes. You may need to add more water/ milk depending on how thick you want it. You will probably need to add more salt!



It looks... grey. But tastes good, I promise! (Quote Beauty and the Beast, Be Our Guest- "try the grey stuff it's delicious!")

Mushroom Pâté Recipe


So you have the rest of the mushroom mixture sitting in the pan. Leave that there for a second. 

Take your handful of walnuts and put them in the blender, till smooth. I used more than a handful and I think my pâté tasted a bit too walnutty. I also added in some soy milk, which wasn't a disaster but I think it made the pâté slightly too soggy. So add some if you like... I'm not sure what it tastes like without!

To your ground walnuts, add half the mushroom mixture and blend till smooth. I added a bit more than half and the pâté wasn't mushroom-y enough :( but this depends on you- you can blend it all up if you want a smooth pâté!

Next, mix in the rest of the mushroom mixture. Try it and add extra pepper/ salt/ lemon/ garlic etc to taste. Now put it in the fridge so that the flavours can blend and so it can cool.


Serve with lot's of walnuts chucked on it to stop it looking so grey?


I was unsure what to have my pâté with, then I remembered I had a red pepper in the fridge! Yes!


But wait!

A better idea!


YUM! 

To create this beauty, fill the pepper halves with the pâté and cook at 200c for 15 minutes. 

Seriously, it was DELICIOUS! 

The creamy mixture went perfectly with the tangy sweet peppers. 

I will definitely be having this again tomorrow!







No comments:

Post a Comment