Given his fondness for meat of all types, and from all sources, TV chef Hugh Fearnley-Whittingstall is an unlikely exponent of vegetarian food. However his latest book, River Cottage Veg Every Day! (Bloomsbury, £25 h/b, photographs by Simon Wheeler), is exclusively devoted to vegetarian dishes. There are over 200 recipes and they’re excellent – the sort of thing you really want to cook at home. This recipe, which appears here with permission, is for a ragout made of well-flavoured mushrooms such as chestnut, portabellini and big, flat, dark-gilled varieties. If you have any polenta left over, let it go cold, then cut into chunks or cubes and fry it to make polenta ‘chips’.
Mushroom ragout with soft polenta - Recipe
Ingredients – Serves 4
For the polenta:
- 400ml milk
- 1 bay leaf
- A sprig of thyme
- A few peppercorns
- ½ onion and/or 2 garlic cloves, bashed
- 150g quick-cook polenta
- 20g butter
- 1 teaspoon finely chopped rosemary
- 20g Parmesan, hard goat’s cheese or other well-flavoured hard cheese, finely grated
For the ragout:
- 2 tablespoons rapeseed or olive oil
- A large knob of butter
- 650g mushrooms, thickly sliced
- 1 large garlic clove, finely chopped
- A few sprigs of thyme, leaves only, chopped
- 150ml red wine
- 150ml vegetable or mushroom stock
- Sea salt and freshly ground black pepper
To serve (optional)
- A trickle of top-notch olive oil
- Extra Parmesan or other hard cheese, shaved
Method
- For the polenta, put the milk and 400ml water into a saucepan. Add the bay leaf, thyme, peppercorns and onion/garlic. Bring to just below the boil, then set aside to infuse for 20 minutes.
- Meanwhile, make the ragout. Heat 1 tablespoon oil and half the butter in a large, wide frying pan over a medium heat. Add half the mushrooms and some salt and pepper and turn the heat up high. Cook, stirring often, to encourage the mushrooms to release their juices.
- Continue to cook until most of the juices have evaporated and the mushrooms are starting to concentrate and caramelise. Add half the garlic and thyme and cook for a minute more, then tip the contents of the pan out on to a plate and set aside.
- Repeat with the remaining mushrooms, using the rest of the garlic and thyme. Return the first batch of mushrooms to the pan.
- Add the wine and stock, reduce the heat and simmer for about 15 minutes until the liquid has reduced by about half. Check the seasoning.
- To cook the polenta, strain the infused milk and water into a clean pan (or just scoop out the flavourings with a slotted spoon, as Hugh Fearnley-Whittingstall does). Bring to a simmer, then pour in the polenta in a thin stream, stirring as you do so.
- Stir until the mix is smooth and then it let it return to a simmer. Cook for just 1 minute, then remove from the heat.
- Stir in the butter, rosemary and cheese, then season generously with salt and pepper (adding at least ¼ teaspoon salt). Immediately scoop the polenta into warmed dishes, top with the juicy mushroom ragout and serve, with an extra trickle of best olive oil and a few slivers of shaved cheese, if you like.
Rebecca Ford - I'm a UK based freelance travel writer and photographer - and the country I most like to visit is Italy. That's not just because of the ...
