Mushroom Pastries – Le Menagier de Paris

Generally speaking I’m not a big fan of mushrooms, but this seemed like a pretty good fairly straightforward recipe to add to my collection of vegetarian side dishes.

MUSHROOMS of one night are the best, and are small and red inside, closed above: and they should be peeled, then wash in hot water and parboil; if you wish to put them in pastry, add oil, cheese and powdered spices.

http://www.daviddfriedman.com/Medieval/Cookbooks/Menagier/Menagier.html

 

 

Ingredients

• 400 grams of button mushrooms
• 375g of smooth ricotta
• 1 tsp olive oil
• 1/2 tsp of powder ginger, powder cloves, pepper each
• Pastry (I generally use shortcrust – enough to fill a 9 inch pie case)
• Muffin tray

Makes about 7 small pies.

Recipe

I happened to have wild saffron milk cap mushrooms, so I used those in place of the button mushrooms. I tried to use only the smallest, youngest mushrooms as MP recommends. Do not eat wild mushrooms unless someone who is knowledgeable has identified them. Small mushrooms are pretty crisp, so I was able to tear them apart with my fingers in smaller bite size pieces, which I then parboiled. Strain these out, and tip in a bowl.

Add ricotta, oil and spices and throughly mix together until it is a combined paste.

Prepare the muffin tray by rubbing butter into the tray, and roll out the pastry to fit.

Add the mixture into the tray and cover the pasty with a lid.

Put into the oven at 180 degrees celsius for about twenty minutes or until the pies are a light golden brown.

I have also made these by doing the pastry more as a dumpling style, but it’s a very tiring method when trying to produce a large quantity.