Wednesday, February 23, 2011

Appetite for Reduction: Mushroom Tibs

I don't think words can describe the taste of this Ethiopian dish, but then I guess Ethiopian food flavors are hard to describe in general. In one word: Wow. (Hey, and my word's a palindrome...so you know this recipe is pretty special.)

The sauce starts out from humble beginnings: vegetable broth, olive oil, and tomato paste mixed together. Then you add spice after spice after spice--some curry, cayenne, thyme, and cumin, some unexpected Hungarian paprika (I used smoked paprika) and cloves, and others I'm forgetting. This is the first time in maybe ever that I didn't have one of the spices the recipe called for--cardamom. I just omitted it and didn't try a substitute.

You coat halved mushrooms in this thick sauce and bake for 20 minutes. I used slightly less mushrooms than the recipe called for so I could save some for a tofu scramble later in the week. So it came out very saucy, and the recipe said the mushrooms were supposed to be thickly coated. I like the sauciness better. It tasted amazing, so good that I sopped up all the sauce with some whole-wheat toast. I plan to make it again and serve it over brown basmati rice with some baked curried tofu as an entree. Two thumbs up!

1 comment:

  1. Oh wow, (to use yr word) these sound great. I think I'm going to have to actually get some cardamom, which I don't have either, because I keep seeing it in recipe after recipe and I need to know what I'm missing.
    Definitely on the list.

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