Mushrooms

While there are circumstances in which I enjoyed zucchini I really hadn't had much luck with mushrooms. But a few varieties of these fungi are reportedly easy to grow, require no soil per se and can be grown in your closet. I haven't done this yet, but I've read enough to take a stab at liking mushrooms. From the view of urban sustainability, mushrooms are just too good (nutritionally) to pass up given their meager requirements.

So enter the 'mushroom crust' quiche. Its a recipe from the same book as the zucchini frittata (isbn: 1-57215-308-3). The mushrooms are sort of hidden in the crust...though perhaps not hidden enough :). The flavor was good, though I'm still not a fan of mushrooms I could eat this on a regular basis.

5 T butter
1/2 lb mushrooms coarsely cut*
1/3 C bread crumbs
2 T wheat germ
3/4 C chopped green onions (inc. tops)
2 C Cheese (your choice, but something strong perhaps, I used Cheddar)
1 C cottage cheese
3 eggs
1/4 t thyme
1/4 t marjoram
Paprika (gets dashed over the top before baking)

Heat the oven to 350 degrees F

Use three tablespoons of butter to saute the mushrooms until limp. Remove from heat and stir in bread crumbs and wheat germ. This is the crust material, you pour it into a greased 9 inch pie plate and press it into a crust as you might a graham cracker crust. In the same pan, put the rest of the butter and saute the onions until soft. Spread these over the bottom of the crust and sprinkle the cheese over these. Then in a blender whirl the cottage cheese, eggs, thyme, and marjoram until smooth. Pour into crust and sprinkle with paprika. Bake for 25-30 minutes.

NOTES:

Next time I'm going to finely chop the mushrooms, maybe even use a bit more and add in a bit more wheat germ as I didn't feel as though I had enough crust. Also the chunkiness of the mushrooms can make it tough to spread evenly.

Also I can't really see any reason you couldn't use olive oil instead of butter if you wanted. Butter is likely to be more local, while olive oil will be imported but if you're watching the types of fats you're eating it would make a difference. In fact, I think you could use less of the fat in any case.

I might try adding a bit more egg and a bit less cheese as well. While speaking of cheese, if you're interested in making mozzarella, a natural by product of that process is to make ricotta and you could certainly use the ricotta in this recipe instead of cottage cheese.

I think the cooking of the onions could be skipped and you could just cut, via some scissors the green onions into the crust and skip the addition of the butter and it would be just fine.

Well try it, experiment and see what you like. I don't like mushrooms but I had seconds on this one.