5-1: Mushroom and Cheese Pie…didn’t go as well as I had hoped. Following directions is important, friends. Let’s dive in–we’re still in Book 1, Group 1 (Appetizers & Starters).
We got a lot of mushrooms in our CSA box this round, and I used the Maitake mushrooms for another recipe from this book, but forgot to photograph it. And as the internet says, “pics or it didn’t happen”. So, I decided to use the White Beech mushrooms for this recipe.
First mistake. Of several.
Recipe card. Unmarked (minus my PDF annotation indicated by the yellow square), so either untested or unremarkable.
Ingredients. Those funny-looking mushrooms are White Beech: it probably would have been a better idea to use a more “traditional” mushroom for this type of dish. I’ve yet to find a good recipe in which to use these type of mushrooms. I’m also lacking a green pepper, and I’ve substituted sour cream for plain yogurt and cheddar-jack for shredded Swiss cheese.
It’s basically a different recipe at this point. No wonder it went so far south.
First step is to bake the pie shell. I stuck it in the oven originally before realizing that I needed to brush it with dijon mustard first. An odd step–I’ve never done that for a savory pie before.
EDIT (4/29/20): I noticed this while doing some webmaster-type site housekeeping–check out that mustard, it’s from Fresh & Easy, a supermarket chain that was here and gone in less than 10 years and I LOVED it. They had several locations around Southern California–our favorite when we still lived in LA was the one in Eagle Rock.
I’m also a bit of a lost/vintage/abandoned retail nerd (my other project is our YouTube channel currently focused on dead malls), so looking through these old pictures is neat sometimes.
Eggs, sour cream, and leftover dijon are mixed together. I was making two recipes at one time last night (2-34: Avocado-Parmesan Salad)–you can see them side by side on my laptop in the background. You can also see me in the reflection of the bowl. Hi!
Veggies are chopped and cooked in my trusty cast-iron pan. You can see the pie crust awaiting filling in the background. Please ignore my dirty stove–clearly, I do. I’m a terrible housekeeper.
Now here’s where the trouble comes in–layering. I start the way the recipe tells me to, with the cheese, which already seems odd. But I triple-checked to make sure I’m doing it right.
And then the veggies…
The moment the egg mixture hits the veggies, I re-check the recipe and realize I screwed up (despite my triple-checking the first time). The egg mixture was supposed to be AFTER the cheese but BEFORE the veggies. 😫 It looked so nice, too.
Since I’ve already screwed up, might as well burn the whole place down and put the parsley on BEFORE it bakes. My parsley is half-frozen anyway, due to an abundance of parsley that needed to be minced and stored away in the freezer.
Again, ignore the dirty stove. I know it’s dirty. I’ll clean it this weekend, I promise.
Set the timer, shove it in the oven, and hope for the best. We’ll survey the damage in 35-ish minutes.
Here’s the result. Egg mixture was cooked, but soggy where it met the mushroom mixture. Probably would have been much better if I had cooked it the proper way. The crust was the best part, which was the one part I didn’t really have anything to do with.
And now I have six more slices of weird soggy pie to eat. Yay?
Would maybe make again, if I followed directions properly and got the right kind of mushrooms. It’s essentially mushroom quiche, but layered instead of mixed all together. I think I prefer the more traditional quiche than this thing.
Grade: C
