I have a trademark recipe, it seems… it’s a dish I’ve often cooked for friends when I’ve entertained or ended up cooking at their place when I’ve been invited for dinner, a braai, etc.
It started off more as an experiment in flavours and aromas and turned into something that people are eating out of the pot before I can get it to the table.
The best thing, is that it is very simple to make, but be warned, it is very rich!
I work per punnet (400g or so) of mushrooms so if you want to make more, just multiply the amount per punnet used.
250ml fresh cream
75-100ml lemon juice
lemon pepper
crushed garlic (to taste – some like a lot, some don’t)
punnet of button mushrooms, chopped into chunks, or thick slices
Pour cream into suitable non-stick pot (I used cast iron on gas most of the time though) and bring to the boil. Add remain ingredients in no particular order. Reduce heat and stir frequently. Take care not to let the cream seperate. You can taste the cream now and then, adding more lemon juice, lemon pepper or garlic as needed. I generally make mine quite lemony but it’s up to you.
As a note, you can also put the garlic in first, with the lemon juice and lemon pepper and ‘fry’ the garlic up a bit to kickstart the aroma. Just don’t scorch it. Add mushrooms into that mix, then the cream over it. Either way works fine, in my experiments.
Let the mix cook and reduce (the mushrooms shrink a lot as they lose their water) and you should end up with a relatively thick-ish cream, grey-ish in colour. Serve hot on fresh garlic bread, over meat, rice, etc or as a dip.
A variation of the recipe I sometimes use is to add some soy sauce and cayenne pepper instead of lemon pepper.
For those that don’t like cream, take the same idea as above and cook the mushrooms in your choice of chutney, tomato paste, etc. If I do that variation, I tend to make it more spicy (more cayenne pepper, etc) instead of lemony.
As a last note, this mix keeps rather well and is ok to reheat and use for a few days afterward. So go big and make a lot…
Last few nights have been somewhat busy for me… and I think the lack of sleep is catching up to me today.
For anyone that works in the IT industry, the old saying, “no rest for the wicked” could not be truer… You work your allotted time at work and perhaps a little more than necessary (I know I do, as does Rob and Rozz) and then go home and generally do one of two things… either sit down in front of a PC again to play games or surf the ‘net or try and switch off in front of the TV or some other distraction.
Usually I watch some anime or whatever is playing on the TV for a bit, research a little and maybe update this blog a bit, browse deviantART for new wallpapers or inspiration, then try get an early (or earlier than usual) night, knowing the next morning I need to be up before most people, a) to avoid traffic and b) to get a head start on the day’s tasks.
Lately though, I’ve been doing upgrades on my forums, from phpBB version 2.0.22 to 3.01, fighting with South African latency while uploading a million and one small files to my internationally hosted server, creating backups (just in case, you know!) and trying to puzzle through the documentation to see where I am going wrong…
Or building an old server up into a general workstation for the girls at home to use, as Tarryn is starting her new job soon and will lose her old laptop, and frankly, I’m a little wary of letting anyone other than a work colleague, that I trust, use mine. Last night I managed to get a majority of the work done on the server, but it was painstakingly slow-going as it’s an old Pentium III, with 512MB RAM and two SCSi 20GB drives… Windows XP runs on it… or should I say, it ‘jogs’.
I’ve loaded all the chat programs they could want on there… MSN, GoogleTalk, Yahoo… and most importantly, antivirus. AVG is perhaps not the best, but hell, it works… And I made each of them their own limited privilege profile so they don’t have to stress about anyone else reading their mail from the dating sites they’re so fond of frequenting.
Need to sit down with Tarryn as well, sometime, and teach her Adobe Photoshop. Think the poor girl has jumped into her new job without really knowing what is expected of her… if she’s going to be doing design work, I think she may be in over her head…
Other than that, now that my one set of forums are upgraded, I need to tackle the other one. And then figure out how to integrate all the other php packages such as phpRaid, etc back into the new boards…
When I will get a chance to play again, I don’t know… we’ll see what happens end of the month. By then things should have settled a bit more. Right now, all I seem to be able to manage is getting home, feeding myself, showering then collapsing onto my bed, watching a few episodes of anime (recently finished “Eureka Seven” and “Fate / Stay Night” and about half way through “Ergo Proxy“) then drifting off into an uneasy sleep, only to wake up a few hours later, feeling like a truck has hit me…
