It's What's Inside... Mushrooms and Root Beer!

These days, I do a lot of my major cooking on the weekend. The weekend before last, I was suffering from a bad cold and didn't really feel like cooking (or doing dishes), but I was also sick of eating candy, cookies, and salty snacks. I was in serious need of some comfort food, and so I decided to meet that need in conjunction with an entry to Dispensing Happiness's "It's What's Inside" blog party.

Stuffed mushrooms are one of my favourite comfort foods. As I've mentioned before, I love mushrooms, and the stuffed form are something my mother does particularly well, that I remember as a tasty treat from childhood parties. I can't for the life of me remember what she stuffed them with, but I had a number of cheeses on hand and decided to do a very simple filling to use up the rest of my ricotta from those brownies for the SHF entry. Now all I had to do was decide what to "hide" inside my mushrooms. I chose, as I often do, sundried tomatoes. They pair well with cheese and mushrooms, they're small, they're tasty, and I always have a jar on hand. There isn't really a recipe for this, as I went very simple and didn't bother with any seasonings. Basically I washed and removed the stems from a handful of large cremini mushrooms (also known as "baby bellas,"), arranged them in a small baking dish coated with olive oil, and put a few pieces of minced tomatoes with the oil squeezed out in the bottom of each. Then I made a mixture with a half container of ricotta, a little more than half as much grated Parmesan, and a small handful of coarsely grated Asiago, and put a big spoonful in each mushroom cap. I baked them at 350 for half an hour, and they turned out nicely golden on top with the cheese fairly melty and the mushrooms well cooked.

For my drink contribution to the cocktail party, I decided I couldn't quite handle alcohol this month, so I went for another comfort food favourite. With a root beer float, I could "hide" a few scoops of vanilla ice cream in my martini glass full of diet root beer, and it was creamy and delicious.

Thanks to Stephanie for hosting this event! I can't wait to see what everyone comes up with.