The Hobbit's Mushroom Toast
“Is it nice, my preciousss? Is it juicy? Is it scrumptiously crunchable?”
The summer kind of got away from us, so it's been a while since we've experimented with recipes based on books! This month's was extra easy to choose since we created a list of 9 recipes inspired by books last month! This month, especially since we would be cooking on a night after working, we decided to make The Hobbit's mushroom toast! We both love mushrooms, so we were extra excited for this recipe!
We were especially interested in this recipe because it called for using dry sherry. Neither of us had ever used it before, so we were looking forward to experimenting with it! We also decided ahead of time that we were going to swap out the whole wheat toast for some ciabatta rolls. You know, spice it up just a bit. We decided to work smarter, not harder, and bought our mushrooms pre-sliced. Although the recipe called for mixed mushrooms, we opted for white mushrooms (mainly because our options were white mushrooms or baby bella mushrooms, and the white mushrooms were cheaper, haha). Since we love mushrooms, we bought a double tub (and thank goodness we did because we pretty much only had three good servings out of it!).
Once we started the mushrooms cooking, we started working on the ciabatta rolls. There were no instructions for the toast, so we decided to ad lib. In addition to butter (because duh). we also added truffle parmesan and black garlic seasoning. It's been delicious on everything we've tried it on, so we felt like we couldn't go wrong with it. We waited to pop those in the oven on broil until we had about 10 minutes left on the mushrooms. Once the mushrooms were soft, we added the dry sherry. We were curious, since we had heard people drank this stuff, so while the sherry was reducing, we decided to try a bit. It's not great. So of course we tricked Chelsea's boyfriend into tasting it. He didn't find it quite as funny as we did. He must not have a great a sense of humor. :p
Anyways, we digress. It took a little while for the sherry to reduce down (we had no idea how long that would take because the recipe didn't say). So Chelsea stirred the mushrooms while Kelli picked the thyme from the stem. Once the sherry had reduced, we added in the thyme and the butter. We were debating on whether or not to throw the toast back in the oven with the mushrooms on top, but we decided against it. Probably mainly because we just wanted to eat the toast already, but who knows!
Once everything was ready, we plated up the toast! In our opinions, the ciabatta rolls were definitely the right call. They added a little extra crunch and were also sturdy enough to hold up to the mushrooms. We think the regular toast would have become soggy and just fell apart. We're also glad that we added the truffle parmesan and black garlic seasoning. It added a little extra to the toast. We also decided to leave the thyme in rather than taking it out, and then we added a bit more to the top as a garnish. We definitely think this was a delicious recipe, but felt like a little something was missing. The next day, Kelli added some garlic powder to the mushrooms and felt like it made all the difference!
We can definitely see ourselves making this recipe again. In fact, while we were eating the toast we were brainstorming ideas. We came up with adding these mushrooms to an alfredo sauce with some spinach or broccoli and some blackened chicken. Goodness, we're drooling about it all over again typing this out! We'll have to make this for one of our upcoming book club meetings!!
Do you think you'd take a page out of a hobbit's book and try this mushroom toast? Or would you rather just stick with their second breakfast? If you’d like to see what we're currently reading, check out our Goodreads profiles (Kelli and Chelsea) or follow 2 Girls Bookin' It on Instagram and Facebook! If you’re excited to see what other topics we’ll be covering in the coming months, make sure to subscribe. Thanks for reading with us!