Garlic Mushrooms in Cream Sauce - New Year's Tapas

Continuing on with the recipes served for our New Year's Tapas gathering, I now give you my very own Garlic Mushrooms in Cream Sauce.

Once again, the inspiration for this came from something I had enjoyed at La Bodega's in Kuala Lumpur at a friends 40th Birthday Party as recently as November last year. The Lovely Wife wasn't able to go bu I remember coming back and telling her how much I had enjoyed the dish. It was like a tasty mushroom soup but more flavourful and thicker, so much so that you could scoop it up with slices of bread. So, as usual, I made a note to try and replicate it and thought that this would be a good time to try it out.




This is rather an easy dish to prepare while the results are quite outstanding. This is what I did:

Ingredients
6 cloves garlic
2 tsps Oregano
1 tsp Rosemary
400g Button Mushrooms
Black Pepper
200ml Cream
2Tbsp Lemon Juice
Corn Flour
Method
Quarter the mushrooms and set aside. In a large base pan, sautee the oregano, rosemary and black pepper in olive oil. Add in the mushrooms and cook well while stirring frequently. Cook till the mushrooms are tender but still firm. Add in the cream and season with salt then stir in the lemon juice. Allow to simmer and thicken with a little corn flour mixed with water if necessary.

In retrospect, I think that perhaps some chopped chives would have added some colour and more flavour to the dish but quite frankly, it tasted just great as it was. Testament to how good this dish was is how quickly it was finished. The Lovely Wife kept making eyes at me as everyone dug into the Tapas and I thought that she was so enamoured with my dish that she was giving me sultry, seductive looks.

Turned out though that she was just trying to get my attention to fill up the bowl with more of the Mushrooms - and that was polished off just as quickly!




I must make a note that Tapas is really best served with some chilled wine. Perhaps the next time...