Pearled wheat risotto with portobello mushrooms

My weekend has started in a very relaxing manner after a really hectic week at work. I'm happy to just potter around at home this morning and read some lovely blogs. I'm baking carrot rolls at the same time, and later we will head for lunch at a nearby brewhouse. It will be a nice day I'm sure. How is your weekend going?

Now to this recipe. I like vegetarian risottos of all kinds, and am ready to eat one at almost anytime. I prefer to make my risottos these days with pearled spelt or barley rather than arborio rice, and now I made one with pearled wheat kernels. This was a really nice and quite basic portobello mushroom risotto. I added a little parsley oil on top for some additional flavour and colour. I also wanted to add the mushrooms pan-fried on top, but they can of course also be mixed in, if you prefer. Have a look at my recipe below.

Pearled wheat risotto with portobello mushrooms

Ingredients

1 l vegetable stock

1 large onion

2 carrots

2 garlic cloves

1+1 tbsp vegetable oil

2 tbsp butter

1,5 cups pearled wheat

1 cup dry white wine

Salt to taste

Ground black pepper to taste

Fresh parsley

4 portobello mushrooms

Method

Warm up the vegetable stock.

Chop the onion, carrots and garlic.

Heat oil in a separate pan, and start cooking the onion. Once the onion is softened, add the carrots and garlic and cook for a while.

Then add some butter to the pan, and stir in the pearled wheat.

Pour the white wine in and let it absorb.

Then make a vegetable stock addition, and keep adding it little by little while the risotto simmers.

Season the risotto with fresh parsley, salt and ground black pepper.

Slice the portobello mushrooms and fry them quickly in a hot frying pan. Then place them on top of the risotto and serve.

Have a great weekend!

Your VegHog

Cooking video - Portobello pizza

I opened my own Youtube channel today, as I'm planning to occasionally publish a cooking video. I once already posted a purple sprouting broccoli and potato soup video and it was great fun making it. Of course it's much more work editing the videos, but I like it. You can find my channel here. 

So today I filmed myself making portobello pizzas with thin spelt-wheat crust. I didn't use tomato sauce in these, but just put tomato slices onto the base instead. I made 3 pizzas from these ingredients. It depends on the size of each pizza and the thickness of the crust, how many you'll get.

Dough:

200 g spelt flour

200 g wheat flour

2 tbsp dry yeast

1 tsp salt

300 ml lukewarm water

3 tbsp olive oil

Filling:

3 portobello mushrooms

200 g tomatoes

1 onion

2 garlic cloves

Fresh basil leaves

Salt

Ground black pepper

250 g grated mozzarella

Enjoy the video!

Your VegHog

Portobello mushroom Wellington

I wanted to make a nice looking vegetarian dish for the Christmas table, and I thought of a mushroom Wellington. Many recipes for this sort of a dish exist, but this one is my own. I thought it would be nice to put parsnips into the wrapping with the mushroom and also to give it a bit more flavour with a walnut pesto type of a sauce.

So here is my simple recipe for portobello mushroom Wellingtons.

Ingredients

Mushrooms:

4 large portobello mushrooms

3tbsp olive oil

600g puff pastry

1 parsnip

1 egg

50g emmental cheese

Pesto:

25g basil leaves

50g walnuts

4tbsp olive oil

1-2 garlic cloves

Method

First of all make the pesto by pureeing the pesto ingredients together to a paste. Put the pesto to the fridge to wait for the other stages to be completed.

Brush the mushrooms with olive oil and roast them. They should lose all the excess fluid during the roasting so that they won't make the puff pastry soggy later. Peel the parsnip and chop it to small cubes. Then also brush the cubes with olive oil and also roast them for about 20 minutes at 150C with the mushrooms. After the roasting let the ingredients cool.

Spread the pesto on the mushrooms and place the parsnip cubes on the bottom side of the mushrooms and then the grated emmental. When you are assembling the parcels, you should take care that the parsnips stay put.

Roll out the puff pastry thinly. You can either wrap the mushrooms in the puff pastry or cut out round pieces. What I did this time, was to cut one larger circle and one slightly smaller, placed the mushroom with the bottom up on the larger circle and then closed the lid by placing the smaller lid on the top. Brush the edges of the pastry with beaten egg and finally brush the whole pastry with the egg. Repeat this for each portobello. I made a hedgehog shaped decoration with a cookie cutter of the puff pastry on the top. Decorations are optional, but will make a nice touch to the dish.

Then turn the mushrooms for baking on a greased baking tray or an oven dish and bake them at 180C for about 25 minutes until the pastry is fluffy and golden brown.

Serve the Wellingtons with other nice veggie Christmas dishes. I served them here with my Pomegranate and coquina squash salad.

Stay hungry!

Your VegHog