One of the appetizers I made for a book club I catered were these delicious mushroom caps stuffed with eggplant and sauteed garlic and onion with a kick of honey habanero mustard and a secret ingredient. The stuffed mushrooms had a nice zest without being hot.
For the guests, I had to take in consideration vegan and dairy, egg allergies. This appetizer is vegan, but on half the mushrooms, I topped them with some Parmesan cheese. You could also use Vegan Parmesan.
Ingredients (makes 14 mushrooms):
- 14 large button mushrooms
- 1/2 large eggplant
- 1/4 onion
- 5 cloves of garlic
- 2 tbsp olive oil
- 1/2 tbsp Dave's Habanero & Honey mustard
- Parmesan cheese or Vegan Parmesan
- (optional secret ingredient) 1 tbsp Paradise Bakery Tomato Pineapple spread mixed with 1 tbsp mandarin orange or pineapple juice
Let's get cooking
- Preheat the oven to 350 degrees.
- Dice the onion and garlic. Cut up the eggplant into 1/2 inch pieces to make it faster for the eggplant to cook.
- Wash the mushrooms and remove the stems.
- Put 2 tbsp olive oil in a pan and heat on medium. When hot, saute the garlic and onion until they're sweaty, and then stir in the Dave's Honey Habanero mustard. If you want more heat (spice), add more of the Dave's mustard. I used about 3/4 tbsp.
- After stirring in the Dave's mustard, toss in the eggplant and stir until the eggplant cooks. You might have to add another 1 tbsp of olive oil or 1 tbsp of water to help cook the eggplant. The eggplant is pretty absorbent. The cooked eggplant should be soft but not mushy.
- Take the eggplant off the burner and put into a bowl to let the mix cool down for about 20 minutes.
- While the eggplant is cooling, massage the mushrooms with olive oil. Place a Silpat on a baking sheet, and and bake the mushrooms at 350 degrees for 3 minutes to soften them up a bit but not too much.
- Take the mushrooms out of the oven to cool down, and then turn up the oven heat to 400 degrees.
- When cool, put the eggplant in a 3-cup food processor and blend until chunky. Pour into a bowl and mix in the Paradise Bakery Tomato Pineapple sauce. You don't need to use this special ingredient Paradise Bakery spread, it's just my personal twist. In fact, you might want to try a little marinara sauce mixed with pineapple juice.
- Stuff each mushroom with the eggplant mix.
- Put a Silpat on a baking sheet, and arrange the mushrooms about one inch apart. Sprinkle the cheese on top of the mushroom caps or leave the cheese out.
- Bake the mushrooms at 400 degrees for 12 minutes.
- Take the mushrooms out of the oven and cool down about 15 minutes before serving.
