Somehow, about a pound of mushrooms has appeared in our fridge. No, I don’t mean the sort that appear when you clean your fridge as rarely as we do (although that thought does make me think I should probably check for that sort too), but that somewhere along the way, the lines of communication broke down and both Quercus and I bought mushrooms this week. So, having got past the delights of saying ‘shrooms shrooms shrooms’ incessantly, I turned my little brain to the task of working out what to do with the little blighters. And lo! there was mushroom pie. It goes thusly:

Mushroom Pie
Ingredients

Two onions (I used red, as they are what Quercus’s mother grew for us this year, us being short of space because of our extension woes);

An entire clove of garlic (and  at this point I would like to say ‘woo’, and possibly also ‘yay’, about the garlic peely-thingy we have recently acquired – it is silicone and funkier than a very funky thing indeed) (And I mean that in UK English terms, not US);

Splosh of olive oil for the frying of the above;

More mushrooms than you can shake a big, thorny stick at;

Sprig of thyme, fistful of parsley, sprinkle of oregano;

Splash of milk;

Stock cube (I used Kallo organic something-or-other);

About four large spoonfuls of ground almonds;

About four large spoonfuls of wholemeal flour (there - you thought I’d gone senile when I typed the same thing to start with, didn’t you?);

Quick burst of red wine;

Spot of paprika;

Spot of ground nutmeg.

Also, a shitload of pastry, made however you fancy it, but particularly nice if including herbs, chopped walnuts and about half a ton of black pepper.

Then…
Sling pastry into the required pot/mould/pie-dish – I used the ubiquitous orange silicone bread moulds, just because I am without fear – and blind-bake the crust for about twenty minutes at 200°c. While that’s doing, get on with the filling, which goes something like this: pile everything in a pan and cook the hell out of it. Or, for the more refined, fry up the onions, garlic, mushrooms and herbs first, then stick in all the rest of it, poking it from time to time, until it’s nice and gloopy, at which point attempt to cover up any lumps in the sauce caused by indecent haste when adding the flour to thicken by shoving them firmly under a bit of onion. Just saying you could, of course. Not that I did. Whack the lot in the pie-case, sticking a nice lid on it, preferably with pastry leaves because where would we be without pastry leaves, and pop in the oven at about 200°c for a half-hour or so.

Munchmunchmunch.

In other news, Quercus is doing the scratch coat of lime render today. He did the hurling at the weekend, and it went really well apart from the near-total loss of his fingertips, lime being a right bastard for burning you. It looks good, though. The render, that is. Not the fingers. The fingers look buggered, frankly. But hey – they’ll grow back. Or something. Er…