Bonjour à tous! Hello, everybody and welcome back to Cépage
et Cuisine, Mary’s and Brian’s wine and food blog. Today, we’re highlighting a delicious
appetizer course we discovered in France and have enjoyed several times at
home. The dish is mushrooms roasted and
stuffed with goat cheese. It is
wonderful before many meals, but especially before poultry, lamb, and beef
dinners. The mushrooms have an earthy,
savory quality that segues nicely into hearty dishes.
Stuffed
mushrooms have been around forever. They
are versatile and can be prepared in lots of ways. We enjoyed this particular version at La
Grange a Dîme, a restaurant in Montreuil Bellay, a small town in the Loire
Valley. We had such a nice time that
night. Here’s my pretty wife, smiling at
me in the light of a table lamp at La Grange a Dîme. The first course of a prix fixe dinner was
mushrooms stuffed with local Chèvre, seasoned with herbs and pepper, then
grilled in a wood-fired brick oven. They
were sensational!
At home,
Mary uses small Portobello mushrooms, commonly labeled at the grocery store as
“baby bellas.” They are just the right
size. Any good goat cheese is fine,
although we prefer a Chèvre if we can find it.
Other ingredients are the herbs, pepper, and parmigiano reggiano. Here’s Mary to discuss the preparation.
The recipe couldn't be easier and takes only minutes to prepare. I just stuff the mushroom caps with a generous portion of goat cheese.
I press the stuffed mushroom into freshly grated parmigiano reggiano, which is my modification of the basic recipe.
Then I season generously
with herbs de Provence and pepper, and in the oven they go.
They need only
about 20 minutes at 350 degrees and they come out golden and sizzling. Let them cool for a few minutes and
enjoy! This easy appetizer course is a
crowd pleaser that can be whipped up in no time. You could even prepare it in advance and pop
them in the oven when you’re ready.
Here’s Brian on
the wine.
I would say
enjoy the mushrooms as a first course with whatever wine you’re enjoying with
dinner. If you want to have a separate
wine for the mushrooms, which we sometimes do just standing at our kitchen
counter and having lively conversation with friends, then a great choice is an
inexpensive rosé like this one. We’re
great fans of La Vieille Ferme, a producer in the Cote du Ventoux in the
Southern Rhone Valley. They offer red,
white, and rosé, perfectly enjoyable and inexpensive enough that we also use
them for cooking. The rosé is light,
refreshing, with aromas and flavors of red berries, melon, and spice. You can’t go wrong with a good rosé. It is easy to drink, doesn’t require a lot of
attention, and is terrific with so many foods, including these stuffed
mushrooms. This wine is a combination of
Grenache and Cinsault and is available in Jackson for $11.
That’s our post
for today. We hope you enjoyed it. Keep checking back here at Cépage
et Cuisine for more articles about food and wine. Don’t forget you can also follow our nightly
tweets on Twitter at http://www.twitter.com/cepageetcuisine.
See you next time!
Cheers!
Mary♥Brian
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