Tonight Wattle’s Port and Cream mushroom sauce is on the plate. I think one of the reasons it is so delightful is that the tongue has an experience of silky, deliciousness. There is almost zero water in the sauce. The flavours all seem to go together wonderfully well to form a combined, different, happy taste. Even if people dislike mushrooms, they can be removed at serving time and the sauce is still an enjoyable cullinary adventure for them as well. The same applies to persons who do not like alcohol. All the alcohol is removed from the sauce in the first stage of its cooking. Only a hint of the port taste remains in the end product. The real difficulty is to only have a modest sized portion of it. The guideline is just as it is for other foods, have slightly less than this time last year.
I need to add a few words about cooking the mushrooms. It is quite important to remove most of the water from them before they join the other ingredients of the sauce. I like to cook them in a non-stick skillet frying pan, at about half the temperature dial, moving them around frequently because even “non-stick” has its limitations. When there is a bit of mushroom water in the pan I place the lid on and let them stew so more water leaves the mushrooms for about ten minutes. It might take less, they need careful watching. I remove the lid, stirring all the time so that the water evaporates out of the pan. That happens quickly. A nice brown forms on the mushrooms. Turn the pan off if you have to leave it for any reason at all.