Champiñones Rellenos

Often in Spain you will find garlic mushrooms on menus in tapas bar but this recipes for stuffed mushrooms provides a tasty alternative. Soaking bread in milk does not sound great but it does work and I’m sure you will enjoy this dish.

Ingredients

Serves approximately 6 – 12 people as a tapa or 4 as a starter

• 50g of butter
• 40g of breadcrumbs
• 7 tablespoons of warm milk
• 12 large fresh mushrooms
• juice of 1/2 a lemon
• 50g of serrano ham (jamon serrano), roughly chopped
• 1 tablespoon of fresh parsley, chopped small
• salt and freshly ground pepper

Cooking Method

Preheat your oven to 180C/350F/Gas Mark 4.

Put the breadcrumbs in a bowl with the milk and leave to soak whilst preparing the mushrooms.

Meanwhile, wash the mushrooms well and remove their stalks. Place the caps to one side and roughly chop the stalks. Melt 25g of butter in a small frying pan or saucepan and add the chopped stalks, the lemon juice and salt to season. Let this cook on a low heat for about 10 minutes.

While the stalks are cooking liberally grease an ovenproof dish with some butter (not from the 80g in the ingredients). The mushrooms will stick if you don’t use enough butter to grease the dish. Place the mushroom caps open side up in the dish, add a small lump of butter to each mushroom (use all the butter that is left) and place in the preheated oven. Bake for 10 minutes.

Check the bread crumbs and if they have not absorbed all the milk drain them. Now put the breadcrumbs in a bowl and mix with the mushrooms stalks, the ham and the parsley. Season with salt and freshly ground pepper. This mixture doesn’t look very appealing but once it is cooked in the mushrooms it tastes delicious. Divide the mixture among the mushroom caps and put them back in the oven for about 30 minutes.

Serve straight from the dish with some crusty bread.