Food talk
 Mushrooms all the way

  Pushpesh Pant brings us bharwan khumb, where the filling doesn’t
interfere with its natural delicate flavour

THE first time we savoured mushroom, we thought why hasn’t anyone thought of bharwan mushrooms that can tickle the local taste buds more? Chef Iliyas, who once used to work with good friend Jiggs Kalra, prepared a delightful bhrawan gucchi under his supervision but alas that horrendously expensive dish was fit only to be ‘put before a king’ as the nursery rhyme has it.

The challenge is not only to keep the food costs under control, the task of packing the mushrooms with stuff that doesn’t interfere with its natural, delicate flavour. The ‘battered’ (pun intended) deep-fried, drowned in tandoori/chaat masala mushrooms impaled on toothpicks that are pressed in service at marriage banquets as veg-starters illustrate the problem very well.

A cousin, who is an enthusiastic cook helping his wife in the kitchen on a regular basis, has passed on this recipe where mushrooms are stuffed with mushrooms. Processed cheese is used in miniscule quantity to bind the filling. We liked it. Hope, you will do so too.

Bharwan  Khumb

Ingredients

Button mushrooms (large sized) 200 gm

Radish (red, round variety) 200 gm

A piece of ginger

(scraped and diced fine) 1 inch

Small onion (chopped fine) one

Garlic clove (chopped) one

Green chilli (deseeded, chopped) one

Processed cheese (grated) 1 tbsp

Oil 1 tbsp

A large pinch of mixed dried herbs

Salt to taste

Method
Wash the mushrooms to clean them well. Wipe dry with a cloth. Wash the radish well, remove the greens and blanch in boiling water with the mushrooms for a minute and refresh in chilled water immediately. Cut stocks and chop fine. Mix with chopped ginger, onion, garlic and green chilly. Make a hollow with a sharp knife — by removing the black membrane — in the mushrooms on the side wherefrom the stocks have been removed. Take care that the head of the mushrooms is not pierced through.

Heat oil in a non-stick pan and put the ‘mince’ made with chopped stocks, onion, garlic, ginger and chilli. Sprinkle the grated cheese on top and stir to mix well and cook on medium flame for two minutes or till moisture released by the mushrooms is absorbed. Remove and pack equal portions of mince in the hollows made in the mushrooms. Place the ‘packed’ mushrooms upside down on the pan and glaze lightly. Pick carefully and pace right side up on a plate with the radish and serve hot or cold.





HOME