Recipe: Portobellos Stuffed With Goat's Cheese and Thyme
It is not, I admit, strictly speaking the season for mushrooms, but portobellos are around most of the time these days and they make for a rich, yet healthy, summer brunch or supper filled with trace minerals that are otherwise hard to get.
Mushrooms of any kind, but particularly the bigger ones, are high in selenium—an essential mineral for properly functioning thyroid glands and for treating weakness or pain in the muscles. Good stuff then. These are also the easiest thing on earth to make, though I do recommend getting your hands on some decent sourdough for toast (Baluard, Crusto and Hansel are all good, if pricey, sources). Likewise invest in good goat’s cheese. Formatgeria La Seu sells some superb versions, but the harder cheeses work best for this dish.
INGREDIENTS (serves four)
- 8-12 mid-sized portobello mushrooms, stalks removed (wipe clean, don’t peel)
- 200 g hardish goat’s cheese, crumbled
- 3 medium-sized shallots, finely diced
- 6 ripe cherry tomatoes, finely diced
- Sprig of fresh thyme, leaves plucked off, about 1 Tbsp
- Salt & pepper
- Olive oil
METHOD
Preheat the oven to 250ºC.
Mix together the goat’s cheese, shallots, tomatoes and thyme with a fork (don’t mush it up too much as you want the colors to pop). Season with salt and pepper.
Spread the goat’s cheese mixture over the top of the mushrooms and place in an ovenproof dish coated with olive oil to prevent them from sticking. Drizzle the mushrooms with olive oil and bake for 15-20 minutes until the cheese is golden and bubbling. Serve on hot buttered sourdough toast with an agua de Valencia (fresh squeezed orange juice and cava).