Roasted umami mushrooms with dill #veganchristmas
December. I must admit that it has surprised me. This year is full of surprises, but the fact that it has passed so quickly is most bizarre to me. And since it’s December and we are still in lockdown – there is even more time for some festive cooking! And although I’m not being true to any particular Christmas tradition, the idea of the December winter celebration & cooking appeals to me. The middle of the grey-cold season is also a good reason to prepare seasonal, festive food. And celebrate the pleasure of eating and the variety of flavours.
So this month, I will try to publish a new recipe every few days to create a good collection of festive food.
Today I present an exceptionally simple mushroom comfort food – mushrooms full of umami flavour. They do not taste like any mushrooms you have eaten so far. Roasted, salty, moist, fleshy. Together with rice, baked potatoes or a piece of good bread, they are great for lunch or dinner. But you can easily serve it as a dinner appetizer or eat it with some other dinner delicacies on a plate of plenty (some people call it “a bowl”, but for me, it is usually a plate and … I like the word “plenty”).
Roasted umami mushrooms with dill
- 400g mushrooms (I recommend brown mushrooms)
- 2 tbsp of balsamic vinegar
- 1 tbsp of sugar or sweet syrup
- 3 tbsp of rapeseed oil
- 2 tbsp of soy sauce
- freshly ground pepper
- good pinch of salt
- 1 tbsp of light miso paste *
- 2 tbsp of finely chopped dill
- 50ml of any plant-based milk (unsweetened)
* (if you don’t have miso paste, you can prepare slightly different mushrooms and replace this ingredient with two tablespoons of nutritional yeast flakes or a tablespoon of tahini mixed with a teaspoon of lemon juice. It will become a different recipe, but will definitely be tasty. Add more salt then, as miso is quite a salty ingredient!)
1. Preheat the oven to 200 degrees.
2. Clean the mushrooms and place them on a baking sheet covered with baking parchment paper.
3. In a cup or small jar, combine the vinegar, sugar, oil, salt, soy sauce, and freshly ground pepper.
4. Pour the sauce over the mushrooms and massage them with your hands. Leave them on the baking sheet with the stems facing up (as in the photos below).
5. Bake for about 25-30 minutes, until they start to slightly dry up and shrink (but we don’t want to totally shrink or dry them).
6. Meanwhile, in a cup or in a small jar (you can use the same one as before), mix the light miso paste thoroughly with the milk.
7. Add the dill and miso sauce to the mushrooms, mix everything thoroughly. Serve hot or cold, with a piece of good bread, rice or with baked potatoes (you can easily prepare them in the oven at the same time as the mushrooms).
