My friend Carol served me some excellent mushroom soup. She told me, when I said I liked it, that she had made out of “old mushrooms.” Which, you know, doesn’t sound all that enticing. But was delicious and it stuck in my mind for months so when I had to come up with a high protein, low carbohydrate meal, chicken and mushrooms came up. (I’m making this sound like I was having a conversation with myself, and I may have been, but that’s OK.)
I didn’t have any “old mushrooms” just on hand and button mushrooms are nice, texture wise, but they don’t have the complex flavor of “old mushrooms” so I hit on portobellos. Sauteed first in a little butter, then blended with stock to a creamy consistency. It was amazing.
And I’ve lost 5 pounds. My pants no longer feel like implements of torture, they are more like pointed reminders not to eat.
Recipe follows.
Carbohydtrate-less Chicken and Mushrooms
4 portobello mushrooms, the older and grungier the better
1/2 medium onion
1 stalk celery
1 lb button mushrooms
1/2 lb bnls, sknls chicken cut into chunks
1 cup chicken stock (I used flat champagne from New Years, I must say)
1TB butter
1 tsp thyme
Salt and Pepper, duh
I don’t know about you, but I wash mushrooms. I don’t care what anybody says,
I don’t like that crap on them. Mushrooms do not “absorb” water
and if you don’t like the feel of the slickness of them,
you can let them dry out before you use them.
And Jacques Pepin agrees with me, so there.
Fry (sauté sounds so much more elegant doesn’t it?)
the portobello mushrooms in the butter on both sides to brown,
add 1/2 of the chopped onions when you flip them,
and then put that in a blender with about 1 cup of stock and blend until smooth.
Put the chicken into the pot and brown, don’t worry about whatever is in the pot, just throw it in.
Let it brown on one side, then add the button mushrooms, the rest of the onions,
and the celery, thyme and salt and pepper all at once and slop it around.
Add the blended portobellos. Let simmer for 30 minutes.
This tastes better the next day.
You could serve it on rice but then you’d be ruining the low carb aspect of it.
Nonetheless, it is delicious enough to eat anytime, low carb or not.
And I threw in a chunk of bleu cheese the next day, which, come to think of it, may
have been why I think of it as so creamy. Still. No carbs.