Cooked and or Baked Foods? what do you like to cook or bake or the person you're with, what can they cook or bake? I'm not the best at baking, but I do try. I'm better at cooking. Steak, baked potato. ground beef, and make sort of a hash out of it, with a mixture of spices, and frozen corn, and peas, and throwing in there maybe a cut up potato, maybe some beef. I baked chocolate chip oatmeal Cookies as a gift one Christmas. Just got done baking Mushrooms in the oven, for around 30 minutes at 425. Then cooked them in some oil, in a skillet for 20 minutes. added some salt, and dipped in some ranch, and they were pretty good! I can't believe how much natural juices Mushrooms have in them!!!
I’m more into baking. My wife is a great cook and bakes some great stuff as well. Works out pretty well. I like to make small batches of cookies—dozen or so. If there are dried cranberries around I’ll make cranberry/almond cookies. Someone gave us dried apricots for Christmas. They made good apricot/vanilla cookies. Probably my favorite to make is chocolate chip/butterscotch chip oatmeal cookies. I like making bread pudding. Apple crisp is fun. Things like that are good. I’ve discovered they are even better with warm caramel sauce that is as simple as microwaving brown sugar and cream. We eat quite a bit of cornbread that I like to make. I make pretty good pizza crust. Your mushrooms sound delicious. A couple months ago we had some mushrooms sitting around so I made mushroom soup. Oh man. I’ll never enjoy mushroom soup from a can the same again. Four ingredients—mushrooms (lots of them, not a few bits like canned soup), heavy cream (fresh from my cows), a bit of corn starch, and a pinch of salt. Mmmmm.
try using a roux instead of corn starch for thickening. with butter it adds a creamy, nutty flavor and with bacon fat it is absolutely fantastic. i also like to use a combination of half and half and sour cream instead of just cream, but i'm a nut about sour cream so this might not be for you. of course, i don't have my own cows.
If I have time sometime I’ll try the roux. I’m usually in a hurry and cornstarch is fast. LOL. But you certainly are rewarded by taking time to do things correctly when cooking. That’s for sure. I like sour cream and would probably like that. But my wife can’t eat sour cream. Or cream cheese. What a terrible affliction—no cheesecake! Aaaarg. I’d rather die! Having limitless supply of cream makes a lot of cooking easier. Biscuits, shortcakes, bread pudding, etc. all can be made without butter just using heavy cream. Do you ever use different kinds of mushrooms or a variety? I just used common white mushrooms.
I’ll bet your mushroom soup is an out of this world experience! I’d be experiencing flavors I’ve never heard before, sounds I’ve never seen, and sights I’ve never tasted.
using the roux really doesn't take that much extra time and it really adds to the flavor. it also gives you the opportunity to use different kinds of fats to alter the flavor. the other wildcard is seasoning. play with your spices and you can come up with some interesting creations, especially with something as tame as mushroom soup. i usually just use criminis. they're plentiful and relatively cheap. getting exotics is more trouble than it's worth around here and i don't bother unless i'm doing it for a special occasion. NO SOUR CREAM!?!?!? how on earth does one survive without it?
I agree about the roux. I start my mushroom soup by sauteing mushrooms and minced onions in loads of butter. Then, when fully softened, I add the flour for the roux. With all the butter, cream isn't necessary - milk will be good. But hey, I'm a pleasure pig and love cream!!
