Chef Paul’s Grilling Tips #4
Portobello Mushrooms
Chef Paul O'Toole: Tip of the week to you! This is Chef Paul O'Toole, chief culinary officer for all of the Forewinds Hospitality Golf Clubs with this week's tip.
Let's talk about the king of mushrooms. The king of mushrooms is the portobello. The portobello started in southern Pennsylvania, in southeast Pennsylvania at a place called Phillips Mushroom House back in 1977.
Actually a portobello is an overmature crimini mushroom and when they were first experimenting with crimini they would let some of them get overripe and then actually the first batches that they had they disposed of. They threw them out because the crimini mushroom opened up and blossomed into this huge head which they really had no use for at the time - and they used to dispose of them. Nowadays, of course, portobellos are considered an exotic mushroom.
When they first came out, they debuted down in Yankee stadium years and years ago where they served them as a sandwich - and that's what I want to talk about today, the king of the mushroom, the portobello from Kennett Square, Pennsylvania.
We're going to take a balsamic vinaigrette - you could make it at home or you could buy the storebought one. Either one will be fine because we are going to basically use this as a marinade.To make a quick balsamic vinaigrette, we can take a half a cup of balsamic vinegar and a half a cup of oil, which will give you one cup of marinade.
We're going to mix those two together and we're going to whip those together until we get what's called an emulsion. It's going to thicken up slowly with the vinegar and the oil. We're going to add a half a teaspoon of salt and pepper, and then we're going to add one-quarter teaspoon of dried thyme, which you probably have in your cabinets and might not even realize it's there.
We're going to put that together and we're going to whip that up, then we're going to take our portobello. The ones you're going to buy in the store are going to be about three and a half inch caps from end to end - we're going to take that stem and we're going to trim just the base of the stem off, but we're going to save the stem and then we're going to take the stem and cut it at the top of the cap, so we're going to have about a three-inch stem too. We're going to take that stem and slice that right down the center and we're going to put that in our marinade along with the mushroom cap itself.
We're going to let that sit in the refrigerator after we've tossed this around so that it's nice and coated in our marinade. We're going to let that sit for about two hours, then we're going to take that out and just pat that dry slowly, just to try to get a lot of that oil off. Then we're going to place that on top of our hot grill outside.
The reason we want to try to drain a lot of the oil out of that is because if we put all that oil with that mushroom on your grill itself it's going to flare up and what'll happen is we'll get a lot of the carbon from the oil burning on the coals of your charcoal grill and it'll coat the outside - not the pleasant flavor we're looking for. So we want to try to get most of that oil off of the mushroom - just try to get a little bit of it off so that it's not dripping onto the coals.
After we do that, that's going to be beautifully seasoned, we're going to get grill marks on both sides of that and that in itself, absolutely goes great with grilled corn or a nice topping for grilled steak.
But you know, we have some alternatives with that too, if you have a grill with a cover on it, a lid that can shut, take a little bit of feta cheese, or a little bleu cheese, put that inside of your Portobello cap, shut the lid on that till that melts and then take that and put that on top of your steak, you're really going to be in for a treat when you have that one, it'll be great. Best of luck to you.
That's my tip of the week! I'm here to make certain your dining experience at any Forewinds Golf Club is a wow! Come out and taste the difference for yourself. This is Chef Paul, promising we'll deliver HospitalityPlus! on every visit.
