PoRtoBeLLo LuNcH

Nope, we did not fly to London to have lunch at Portobello Road but how I wish we did! Instead we had grilled Portobello Mushrooms for lunch which was extremely easy to rustle up. I've been eyeing the mushrooms for a while in the supermarket but have yet to try them out. However after reading Nigel Slater's Real Food's description of the sandwich which he had pinched from Nigella Lawson's How to Eat, resistance was futile as any Trekkie will tell you.

These mushrooms are the largest ones in town and are basically the big brother/sister of the brown mushrooms. Sometimes vegetarians use them as a beef subsitute as they have a meaty texture. For the sandwich, we used ciabatta bread which is now easily available at Delifrance shops for RM2.00. There seems to be a ciabatta war going on in Bangsar Shopping Centre though, you can now get ciabatta for RM1.99 at the new bakery inside Cold Storage. I suspect that competitive pricing recently spurred Delifrance to reduce their initial price for ciabatta from RM2.50 to RM2.00 for all their outlets.

Hot Mushroom Sandwich

1 large flat portobello mushroom
Large knob butter
1 large clove garlic
chopped 1 tbsp chopped flat leaf parsley
1 small crusty roll or ciabatta
Dijon mustard
Lemon Juice
Salt
Chopped lettuce ( optional)

Preheat oven to 200C/Gas 6. Put mushroom on a baking tray and cover with butter, chopped garlic and parsley. Cook for about 20 minutes. Cut open a small roll and wipe the cut side all over the pan to soak up the juices. Smear with dijon mustard, top with the mushroom, squeeze with lemon juice, season and add some chopped lettuce. Eat immediately.

This is the assembled mushrooms before they went inside the oven.



Mushrooms on top of the ciabatta which I smeared lightly with some mustard. I made a simple salad from butterhead lettuce, tomatoes and black olives drizzled with some olive oil to go with the sandwich.



It was divine with all the garlicky juices dripping out from the mushroom so your bread is not too dry but crusty on the outside. Incidentally, the juices are all inside the mushrooms so when you bite into it, they ooze out.