Escarfaux

While I was waiting for an onion to caramelize (see previous post), I decided to make some escarfaux from a bag of leftover mushrooms in the fridge. They are essentially mushrooms in a butter-garlic sauce, similar to that of escargot. The recipe originally came from my favorite cookbook ever, Clueless in the Kitchen, but they were called "Mushrooms Masquerading as Escargot." I decided they needed a better name, so I came up with Escarfaux. Rather fetching, no?

The ingredients:


My oven was already preheating to 375, but if yours isn't, do it now. A toaster oven works well for this too, if you have a casserole dish that is small enough to fit in your toaster.

Wash a bunch of mushrooms and arrange them stem up in a casserole dish. Disregard the one that I accidentally broke the stem off of. Oops.


Now put half a stick of butter (or however much you have lying around, or a combination of butter and olive oil), a few cloves of garlic, minced, and a handful of parsley, chopped in a microwave safe bowl. I used a measuring cup because it has a spout, and it was clean. And i know for a fact that it's microwave safe.


Nuke it for 30 seconds to a minute, just until the butter is melted. It should smell amazing. If it doesn't, I can't help you.


Pour this mixture over the mushrooms, add a generous pinch of salt and a bunch of freshly ground pepper and throw it in the oven.


After about 15 minutes, or when the mushrooms are small, soft, and dark in color, take them out. At this point I put them in the dish I'd be serving them in, which in this case was a tupperware and poured the remaining sauce on top. If you're feeling saucy (get it?) you can drizzle them with a bit of a balsamic reduction (sounds complicated, but basically all it is is heating up a bit of balsamic vinegar in a sauce pan until it thickens up. It makes it sweeter) or a light squeeze of lemon juice.