Yay Mushrooms! Mushrooms are a wonderfully versatile ingredient, they’re packed full of nutrients with a lovely earthy, umami flavour and I’ve often found myself wondering why mushrooms aren’t modified more often for individuals on textured diets? When I was told the Foundation’s feature ingredient this month were these beautiful little morsels, I thought I’d share with you all one of my more recent recipes for texture modified mushrooms.
Texture Modified Mushrooms with Blue Cheese and Chives.
Ingredients
- 600gm Sliced button or field mushrooms
- 120gm Butter
- 1 1/3 cup Chives chopped finely
- 30 – 40gm Blue cheese
- 90ml Cream
Optional
- ½ tsp of Xanthan Gum or 1 measured scoop of Nestle Food Science Resource Thicken Up.
- Incorporating Xanthan or Thicken Up helps to create a super smooth puree that’s not “grainy” in appearance or texture.
Method
- Heat butter in a large saucepan over a medium heat. Add the mushrooms and cook until lightly browned, about 5 minutes, then add in the chives and cream.
- Reduce heat to low and simmer, stirring occasionally until the mushrooms are tender and the cream has reduced slightly, approximately 8 min. Remove the pan from the heat, crumble in blue cheese and use the residual heat to incorporate whilst stirring. Taste and season with salt and pepper.
- Transfer mushrooms into a Robot Coupe Blixer or similar with the Xanthan or Nestle Thicken Up Powder and blix to the desired texture level. If you don’t have access to a bilxer, a stick blender will also work nicely.
- Serve with modified eggs and whipped avocado for an interesting contemporary breakfast option, use as a side dish with an appropriate beef or chicken option or perhaps even use this recipe as a base ingredient for an alternative sauce or gravy?
Remember, think outside the box! Mushrooms can be incorporated into a modified diet…Give it a try! What kind of mushroom modifications can you come up with? Amanda Orchard is the founder of Texture Modified Food Solutions. On accepting a role as Chef Manager at an aged care facility in Western Australia, Amanda identified an opportunity to provide residents on texture modified diets a more flavourful and engaging dining experience. Achieving fantastic results and with overwhelmingly positive feedback from residents, families, staff and industry professionals, Amanda founded Texture Modified Food Solutions to assist those preparing and serving meals to individuals dealing with swallowing difficulties. “I’m excited to share through simple honest cooking, flavour enhancing, modification & presentation techniques that beautiful texture modified cuisine can be accessible to all”
