And now for the details…

Double digits in the quarantine challenge! I am now at day 10 of 14 of the daily recipe challenge.

Today’s recipe was brought to you by the same friends who I cooked yesterday’s meal with. They added a few “mystery ingredients” to the groceries they delivered to the house. One of those ingredients were portobello mushrooms. I happened to have some ground lamb in the freezer, and I thought that a Merguez flavoured stuffing for portobello mushrooms would be an awfully delicious option!

Let’s get to cooking.

Start by preheating your oven to 425ºF/220ºC.

Next, we move on to mixing the spices. I had whole fennel seeds, so I needed to grind them down. I used a mortar and pestle, and ground them until they were almost a powder. Mix this powder with the rest of the spices, salt, and pepper, until they are mixed together thoroughly.

Next, we will get the mushroom caps ready to go. Wash the outsides of the caps, and remove the stem, if there is one. Brush to outside of the cap with olive oil. We do this to help prevent the mushroom from drying out too much when they are baking. Lay the mushroom caps onto a small baking sheet, lined with parchment paper.

Next, we prepare the filling. Sprinkle the spice mix over the ground lamb, and add the egg. Mix these all together very well. I find using my hands works best for this. Get right in there and squish everything all together.

Next, lay the pieces of bocconcini into the mushroom caps in a single layer. If you have larger bocconcini, feel free to use that. But again… quarantine.

Next, split the meat into four equal parts, and press the meat into the mushrooms caps. Once you have pressed the meat in, use the back end of a knife, and push a little cross into the meat. This helps to make the sections of meat smaller, which is going to help even out the cooking when it goes into the oven.

Place the tray into the oven and cook for 20 minutes, or until the meat registers at 165ºF or 75ºC.

Remove from the oven, serve immediately.

Happy eating.