Monday, November 2, 2009

The Tastiest Mushrooms I've Ever Prepared

Last Friday night, I accidentally struck upon an amazing method for "The Tastiest Mushrooms I've Ever Prepared". First, I had a Kroger's Pork Loin Roast that needed to be eaten before November - yes I usually go organic and local, and Cincinnati based Kroger is anything but that, but it was on sale for less than $4 and I was in a hurry. So... here's the ingredients
- one 9" x 12" cooking pan
- one sheet of thick aluminum foil, to line the old pan
- one pork loin roast, approx 1.5 to 2 lbs
- one to one half bottle of red wine you don't want to drink, but that is not so rancid you need to pour it out
- 2 cups of olive oil
- 1 handful of grated garlic (about 3 cloves)
- pinch of sea salt
- pinch of freshly ground black pepper
- one large cereal bowl of dried Shiitake-Ya [TM] gourmet mushroom blend (porcini, morels, brazilian, ivory portbellas, shiitake, oyster). I got mine at Costco, cheaply. [Product of USA! No nasty Chinese mushrooms in my kitchen!] www.shiitakeya.com

...and here's the method:

Start your gas grill, to get it nice and hot, to sterilize it, and to "heat soak" it. Mine runs around 360F on warm up with 3 burners, and 300F on simmer with 2 burners, in-direct grilling. I've tried to go lower, but my grill undercooks below 300 - it's an old analog dial TC, so it may be an erroneous reading.
Soak the mushrooms, 3 washes, in the bowl, using softened water (ubiquitous in Phoenix homes built after 2003) from the kitchen sink. Drain them.
Line the baking pan with the foil, trying not to tear it, gently pushed into the corners.
Lay the pork loin in the middle of the pan.
Surround it with the mushrooms, that are still slightly wet.
Dump the entire contents of the bottle of wine.
Drizzle the oil oil over the pork loin.
Sprinkle the salt, pepper, and garlic, over the pork and mushrooms.
Place pan in grill, over the center where the burners are not on, and reduce the heat down to "simmer" - about 3/5ths of full-warm-up temp (one flame, on my grill dials).
Wait an hour for your wife to drive home, and open up an inexpensive bottle of good wine, while the roast cooks, but don't drink more than 1 glass, or you'll miss the awesome mushrooms.

When the roast was brought in, what was a red wine covered pan, had no red left. The mushrooms had soaked up everything. None of the salt, pepper, or garlic was visible, but it was deliciously absorbed. The mushrooms and pork loin were SO DELICIOUS, that there were no left-overs - and I forgot the can of corn I'd headed up in the microwave, until Saturday morning! LOL!

5 comments:

  1. Sounds really good. I'm assuming the 2 *cups* of olive oil is a mistake? That's a lot of drizzlin'!

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  2. well, a 9 x 12 pan, with 1/2 a bottle of wine in it and a loin roast centered, is only about 1/4 inch deep in wine. So the 2 cups of EVOO both "wetted" the meat to keep the spices on it from rolling off, and "submerged" the surrounding chorus of mushrooms, completely. I THINK, that the EVOO also created an "oil slick" above the wine, that "capped" the wine pool by surface tension so that it more intensely absorbed into the fungi. "That's my theory... and I'm stickin to it" =)

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  3. my methane fed outdoor grill can be a "harsh" environment, often scorching and easily over-cooking. The EVOO was intended as sort of "armour" to resist any heat transfer issues. It worked better than I hoped! =)

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  4. sorry "Navi" but East Asia doesn't have a monopoly on fungus growth. Get over yourself, and publish a profile you anonymous, irrelevant little boy.

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