Ingredients for Vegan Mushroom Stew on Polenta
- Mushroom stew
- 400-500 g Mushrooms, ideally 3-4 different kinds
- 4 large cloves of garlic, more to taste
- 1 1/2 Tablespoon sweet paprika
- 2 teaspoons salt
- 1 teaspoon white pepper, more to taste
- 3 tablespoons fresh chopped parsley (
- Juice of 1/2 lemon, or 3/4 lemon, to taste
- Soft polenta
- Water
- Fine polenta
- 1 tablespoon salt
- Garnish
- use 1 tbs of coarsely chopped parsley
- Optional – Green Chilli Shata (Palestinian green chilli relish)
- Optional – grated Parmesan for non-vegan option
Cooking Instructions for making Vegan Mushroom Stew on Polenta
Prepare the ingredients for cooking. Wash and chop fresh mushrooms in pieces that stilll preserve their texture and shape – I intentionally leave some pieces chunky and some smaller mushrooms whole. The best visual result is to mix types of mushrooms, and I vary this based on what I can find at the farmers market, but it’s usually a mix of 4-5 of chestnut, oyster, shitake, enoki, but any other mushrooms would do as long as they have texture.
Finely chop garlic – I like using 4-6 large cloves as the dish should be quite garlicky. Chop parsley, setting aside c. 1 table spoon that is more coarsely chopped that will be used for garlic later.
Heat up the oil on medium heat in a large skillet or a wok. Add garlic and stir fry until it gets yellowish in colour but not dry and brown. This lets garlic taste release into the oil.
Add mushroom, paprika, salt and pepper. Stir until mushrooms start letting their liquid and then stir fry, stirring occasionally so that all pieces are cooked the same. Once mushrooms have shrunk, taste one of the larger pieces to check it is soft and well cooked through – this means they are done. NOTE: Mushrooms will let out a lot of liquid, this is desired and some of this you want to keep in so do this test while there is still some liquid left in the pan.
Next steps is to get the taste just right to your taste. Start by adding juice of 1/2 lemon. (Alternatively you can add 1/2 cup of dry white wine, but I prefer not adding alcohol.) Taste a mushroom piece and add salt and pepper, or more lemon juice (it should taste slightly sharp and fresh to even out the mushroom’s relative blandness of taste, but it should never overtake the taste. I find myself usually adding another 1/4 lemon juice, and a bit more paprika (adds sweeetness).
Once you are happy with the taste, put aside until you are ready to serve as polenta takes very little to cook. I sometimes make it the day before and put in the fridge, and just heat up for a few minutes in a pan before I make polenta, a few minutes before serving the dish.
TIP: Make sure that you don’t over-dry the stew in this process. Here are photos of how much liquid is too much and how much is just right. You will want there to be same liquid so that polenta soaks it – otherwise the dish is too dry.
Polenta: I put 4 cups of water, salt and prepare c. 2 cups of polenta. Bring water to a boil. Gradually add polenta constantly & vigourously stirring ot avoid clumps. You want to consistency to be like that of a grits or rice pudding before stopping adding polenta. Keep stirring another 30 sec until it gets a bit less liquid, but make sure that it’s still spreadable (ie should not get too dense as you want to be able to spread it) on the board). TIP: use a mixer to mix in polenta into water
Serve polenta on a wooden cutting board with mushroom stew on top – it makes for a great dinner party centrepiece. Garnish with fresh chopped parsley. As an option on the table I usually offer Green Chilli Shata (can be bought in Middle Eastern stores, and from Ottholenghi). It’s spicy so I let people sprinkle it themselves on top of the dish once in their own plate.
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