Duxelles Sauce (Mushroom Spread)
2 tablespoons olive oil (about 30 ml?) or other tasty, buttery oil
1/2 a small onion, minced very finely
3 shallots, minced very finely
1 pound mushrooms or mushroom stems, minced very finely (just shy of half a kg)
1/2 cup flat-leaf (Italian) parsley, very finely minced (125 ml)
1/2 teaspoon salt (2 ml)
1/4 teaspoon freshly ground pepper (1 ml)
optional: 1/2 cup walnut pieces (125 ml)
1. Prepare the onions and shallots. Clean mushrooms, and then dry them as thoroughly as possible (I squeezed them in a clean kitchen towel). Mince mushrooms and set aside separately. Note: any kind of mushrooms will do nicely-- I used a mix of button mushrooms and crimini (baby bella).
2. Grab your saucepan and put in oil (as a lacto-veg, I used organic butter, but there is absolutely no reason not to use a flavorful oil in its place). Cook onions and shallots over medium-low heat until soft, sweet, translucent, and barely turning golden. DO NOT ALLOW TO BROWN at all, since it will ruin the flavor of the sauce (even if you find browned onions delicious elsewhere). This will take roughly 10 minutes.
3. Add mushroom mince and stir throughout. Continue to cook the mixture down over a medium heat, stirring every minute or so. Liquid will rise to the top while this mixture cooks; you want to cook and stir this until it ceases rising to the top. It will thicken into a lovely paste and the flavor will deepen.
4. Stir in salt, pepper, and parsley, and allow to cool. You may add walnuts at this point if desired, or even blitz them in the food processor with the dry mushrooms earlier in the recipe.
5. Enjoy small amounts of this extremely rich, slightly chunky paste as a flavoring agent in soups, stews, sauces, etc. It is DELICIOUS smeared thinly on wholegrain toast. Store leftovers airtight in refrigerator or freezer.
P.S. I used it as the spread for an open-faced sandwich featuring quickly stir-fried summer squash and red peppers and a handful of tiny tomatoes-- delicious!
SO HOW'D IT GO?
I minced them before cooking by pulsing them in the food processor. They came out in sunflower-size tidbits, still raw. If you return the mixture to the heat, that liquid will eventually cook down and the paste will thicken up-- mine was very liquid in the interim, when the mushrooms had expressed all their juice but it hadn't yet sublimated into the sauce/evaporated off.
At any rate, I hope it tastes good and that you enjoy it as an additive to other sauces! That's what I did with a lot of mine, too-- tomato mushroom sauce for pasta, mmm. :)
I tried making this recipe with just a few variations, but I put everything in the blender after cooking for a short time on the stove top. I did this because I didn't imagine the mushrooms would really turn into a pate texture if i just let them cook (I should mention this was my first time ever cooking with mushrooms). Well, the blender was not the best call because it came out very liquidy! How did you mince your mushrooms? Perhaps if I do this as you did I will see how they are able to become a paste if I do not blend them. Thanks!
I ended up using my "mushroom sauce" as an ingredient in my dinner tonight. It went surprisingly well with tomato sauce over tofu (all cooked up together for about 10 minutes and served very hot)