Stuffed mushrooms with artichokes in the oven

Recently I had a big dinner to plan for and as usual last minute I decided to add an extra appetiser to be shared amongst the guests. I came up with this one which proved to be a general crowd pleaser. So here goes the recipe.

Ingredients:

6 big Portobello mushrooms (plus extra 2 eventually for bulking up the stuffing)

3 artichokes

2 rashers of bacon (optional)

1 big onion, chopped

1 clove of garlic, minced

A small carton of cream

Course bread crumbs (use Panko or make your own if possible, the result will be a crunchier and tastier texture)

Parsley

Grated parmigiano

Sal, pepper, nutmeg

Start by first removing the stalks of 6 mushrooms without discarding them. Remove the external skin of the mushrooms carefully as we need them to stay intact. Put the prepped mushrooms aside. In the meantime, cut off ends of mushrooms stalks where soil tends to be retained, discard the dirty bits and chop remaining part of stalks finely into a kind of brunoise. Clean artichokes removing external leaves and inedible feathery bits. Chop up the artichoke hearts finely as well. This will be added to the core stuffing.

Grill or fry 2 rashers of bacon. Remove from the pan and chop up into small pieces. In the same pan if you wish, separately sauté the finely chopped onion and minced garlic in a bit of olive oil till soft but not too cooked. Add the chopped bacon and diced mushroom and artichoke mix and give it a minute or two on a hot fire stirring continuously. The idea is to sauté this briefly on a hot fire and not to let it stew into a limp, watery state. Remove from the fire, season with salt, pepper, nutmeg and a sprinkle of parmigiano. Set aside to cool a bit.

Oil an oven proof dish generously with olive oil before placing your mushrooms inside. This will prevent them from sticking to the bottom during cooking. Fill up the hollow side-up mushrooms with the sautéed stuffing. If you realise in the meantime that the stuffing is not sufficient for the amount of mushrooms that need to be filled just chop up an extra whole mushroom and add to the pre-cooked mixture in order to bulk it up.

On the side, make a mix of chopped parsley and bread crumbs in a bowl and spread this evenly over each stuffed mushroom.

Heat up your oven to 200⁰C.  Just before the mushrooms go into the hot oven stir up some cream seasoned with pepper, nutmeg and a bit of grated parmigiano and pour over each mushroom. However, do not create a swimming pool of cream as the mushrooms will not result in a nice, firm texture.

If you desire you may skip the cream and replace it by olive oil (or butter) to the crumbly topping in order to create the nice crunchy finish required.

Cook for about 15 min until the mushrooms have browned nicely. Serve with a simple green salad on the side. Great for a light lunch, snack or as one of a collection of tapas when entertaining more people.