As a caterer, I pride myself on being able to properly scale food. Whether it’s for a 6-person dinner party or a 50-person bridal shower, there’s nothing worse than having too little (or too much) food. So, like a true culinary nerd, I always get way too excited when I’ve bought just the right amount of flour. Or when I see the guests holding hands over their stomachs with looks of content just as the food is running low.
The question is: why, oh why can I not practice this same discipline with my own family gatherings? Every year when I go home for the holidays I’m tasked with cooking the holiday meal for our small family of four. (And by tasked, I mean everyone tries to help me while I continually turn them down and instead suggest they “help” with loading the dishwasher.)
I think they’re secretly happy that I don’t let them help because this means they have leftovers for a week. I can never seem to apply my “perfect” scaling abilities to my own family. My mom loves to make turkey, cranberry sliders (adding mac and cheese, vegetables, and whatever else she can find in the hundreds of containers in the fridge). But this year I tried to be creative with our leftovers. Instead of just putting the stuffing into sandwiches, I made stuffing stuffed mushrooms with mornay sauce! Yum!
Yields: ~15-20 mushrooms (variable depending on the carton)
Total Time: 20 minutes
Ingredients:
1, 10 oz carton button mushrooms
1 cup stuffing
For mornay sauce:
Yields: 1 cup
1.5 tbsp butter
1.5 tbsp flour
1 cup fat free milk
pinch nutmeg
2 oz gruyere
- Preheat oven to 350°.
- Clean mushrooms and remove stems. Place on a baking sheet with ~1/2 inch water. Bake X ~15 minutes or until soft. Drain and cool.
- Place 1 tbsp stuffing into each mushroom and bake X 10 minutes.
- Meanwhile, melt butter in saucepan. Add flour, whisking continually until roux is formed. Slowly add milk while whisking until combined. Add a pinch of nutmeg and stir in gruyere.
- Drizzle mornay sauce over stuffed mushrooms.
The Cook’s 2 Cents:
- When making the mornay sauce, add a little milk at a time whisking in between each addition to combine well. If you don’t add the milk slowly, it’s hard to obtain a smooth mixture.
- The steaming of the mushrooms is just to make sure they’re cooked. The stuffing is already cooked, so it doesn’t need long in the oven. You’ll know the mushrooms are steamed if you can easily insert a knife meeting little resistance.
- You can add just about any white cheese to the mornay sauce. I love gruyere, so that’s what I added.
Nutrition Facts:
Serving Size: 3 mushrooms
Servings Per Recipe: ~5
Calories: 63 Fat: 3g Sodium: 123mg Carbs: 6g Fiber: <1 Sugars: 3g Protein: 3g
