Few things in life are as good as freshly baked bread. That goes for home-baked bread toasted in copious amounts of butter as well! In fact, the bakery where I worked at for a couple of months in 2019 made a mushroom on toast with my breads. On cool autumn nights, you are not necessarily in the mood for soups as this will finally signify the winter's arrival. Postponing the inevitable, I make a quick weeknight dinner consisting of mushrooms and bacon, cream, and toast. This has to be one of the most flavorful dishes you can make. Please read along to see my method and recipe of how I make a weeknight mushroom on toast dinner.
Mushroom on Toast and Some Fresh Herbs and Microgreens
Mushroom on toast screams for fresh herbs and delicate microgreens. To finish the dish, and to add volumes of complex flavors, you will need to have some fresh herbs. Store-bought ones are fine, but if you can get some fresh, use them. Most people will have either rosemary or thyme growing in their gardens, but I opted to use a herb called winter savory (Satureja montana). Not only is the flavor stronger than thyme and rosemary, but it also has a more meaty flavor.
Recipe
For this recipe you will need the following ingredients:
- Any combination of mushrooms,
- Cream (or any alternative),
- Bacon (optional),
- Sourdough bread,
- Fresh herbs (like rosemary, garlic chives and microgreens),
- Onion,
- Garlic, and
- Olive oil.
Method (in Photographs)
I made this dish for four people. To make it for more people requires more prep work. If you make a single serving it will be less work. Especially regarding the cutting of all of the ingredients. But many hands will make the workload less.
Chop the Ingredients
This recipe is mainly chopping the ingredients into smaller pieces. Begin with the mushrooms, then the bacon, and lastly the onion. I cooked them in this order as well. My technique was to cut the mushrooms rather thin but to keep the original shape. This will make for a prettier presentation.
Dry Cook Mushrooms, No Oil!
I have no idea where I got this tip from. I watch a lot of recipes on YouTube and read a lot as well. So I got the tip from somewhere, but the origins have left my mind. (If you know where this tip comes from, please let me know!)
Dry cook your mushrooms. Do not add oil, yet at least.
The dry heat, I think, helps concentrate the flavors by reducing the water content. If you add oil at this stage it will not brown as much because there will be too much liquid in the pan. Again, this was a big meal for loads of people. If you do a single portion you can add all of the mushrooms at once. I did it in different batches.
Dry heat, no oil.
Let them brown. This adds tremendous amounts of flavor to the final dish.
Continue with all of the other mushrooms:
For these more "exotic" mushrooms I added some olive oil. They did not have that much moisture, plus I wanted them for presentation value on the bigger and more identifiable side.
Mix it Together
I mixed it all together in a new pan. In a separate pan, I cooked the bacon and then cooked the onions in the bacon fat. This step is obviously optional and not at all integral to the dish. You can add some olive oil or butter at this stage. You will essentially flavor the oil with all of the mushroom flavors!
Add the Cream
At this stage, you can add the cream with the heat off. You can also skip the cream stage and use only coconut oil and any starch to thicken the sauce if you want to make it vegan. Depending on what you want to do with the dish, you can add extra stock to make it into a soup! But, obviously, I opted for a thicker consistency to use it on toast. You also want to add the fresh herbs now. You can save half of the herbs for garnishing purposes.
Use Sourdough Bread
If you can find some good sourdough bread that does not cost you an arm and a leg, use it. The crumb and texture pair so well with this dish. I am lucky to be able to bake for myself, so I never have too little bread. Good bread goes a long long long way.
Fresh or toasted, the chewier texture absorbs all of the mushroom cream. The fresh herbs compliment everything so well. When you cooked the mushrooms, you added half of the herbs. Now you can add the other half of the herbs while the heat is off and you are preparing the bread.
Plate and Enjoy!
To be fancy or to snap a shot for the Instagram, you can plate the dish with some cream on the side of the plate. I also had some microgreens that added another layer of complexity. The fresh herbs with the slight bitterness from the rocket microgreens paired so well together.
Postscriptum
I hope you make this dish for yourself! It is really delicious and flavorful. It might be a lot of work if you make it for a couple of people, but hopefully, they will help you prepare the ingredients. This should be a hearty plate of food you share with friends and family. Or you can make it for yourself as a weeknight dinner. It is really easy and quick if you make a single portion. Even better will be self-foraged mushrooms, but be careful! I am too scared to harvest on my own. Find someone you trust (if you are not schooled in picking your own yet). All of the photographs are my own and I came up with this recipe on the spot (in the shop). Please feel free to share your experience with mushrooms, I'd love to read it. Stay safe and happy cooking.
