White beans on portobello

Vegetarian, vegan if you skip the feta

• 1 - 2 cups dried white beans, soaked for a few hours

  • 1 can of beans, rinsed and drained, if you don’t have time to cook the beans

• 1 bay leaf

• 3-6 portobello mushrooms, stems and gills removed

• Olive oil

• juice of 1 lemon

• 2-3 cloves of garlic, minced

• 1 cup fresh bread crumbs or panko crumbs

• 4 - 6 oz feta cheese, crumbled.

• fresh thyme OR sage

• salt

• pepper

1. Bring beans to a boil in their soaking liquid. Add water to cover by about 1” or so.

2. Add bay leaf

3. Reduce beans to a simmer, and cook over a medium/low heat for 30-60 minutes or longer, until beans are soft. Cooking time will vary based up type of bean and freshness. Cannellini or navy would work well, you can try what you like. Black bean might be good, but use cumin instead of thyme or sage.

4. Preheat over to 400 degrees.

5. Place mushrooms stem side down (where the stems were, so to speak) on a baking sheet. Some parchment paper underneath will make your clean up easier.

6. Whisk together 2 - 3 Tbl olive oil with the lemon juice.

7. Brush the outside of the mushroom caps well with the oil/juice mixture.

8. Turn over the caps (stem side up), and pour/baste any remaining oil/juice on the stem side. If you do not have enough, no worries.

9. Turn caps back over so the tops are facing up.

10. Bake the mushrooms 15-20 minutes until they collapse and are soft. Remove from the oven but leave the oven on.

11. Heat 1-2 Tbl of olive oil in a sauce pan over a medium heat.

12. Add the garlic an sauté briefly to just flavor the oil and take the heat a bit out of the garlic.

13. Add a pinch of the red pepper flakes.

14. Turn oven up to 425 - 450 (this is not an exact science)

15. Add 1-2 cups of the beans with their cooking liquid. If using canned beans, add some water, or some stock. 1/4-1/3 of a cup would be good.

16. Add thyme, salt and pepper to the beans.

17. Simmer over a medium heat for 3-5 min or so until most of the water has been absorbed or cooked off. Turn off and remove from heat.

18. In a small bowl, mix the bread crumbs, feta cheese, 1-2 tbl of olive oil, some salt, pepper and some thyme.

19. Flip portobellos over so the stem side is up.

20. Spoon beans generously over the top of the mushroom caps. Flatten out the pile of beans on each cap.

21. Spook bread crumb mixture on top of the beans. Do not flatten these.

22. Bake for 5-10 minutes until breadcrumbs are toasted.

Variations:

• Saute breadcrumbs in olive oil and w/ some garlic before adding feta.

• Drizzle olive oil on top of each mushroom cap with beans and bread crumbs right before (or after) cooking.

• Use parmesan instead of feta.

• Cook 6-10 portobellos or a bunch of any mushrooms, increase the amounts of everything 2x or more, and bake like a casserole, with the mushrooms overlapping in the bottom of a well oiled pan, covered by beans and breadcrumbs/cheese mixture.

• Go Greek and use oregano.