Parmesan, pancetta and thyme stuffed mushrooms

Portabello mushrooms stuffed with pancetta, parmesan, parsley, thyme and garlic:

We went to see Iron Man 3 last night – it was quite good; lots of explosions, Orientalism and American patriotic moments – a solid 6.75/10. The thing with going to the cinema is that Tesco is right next door so it makes sense to combine trips, but it does mean we walk around the supermarket like hungry zombies post film at about 10.45pm, and I’ll tell you something; it is never a good idea to go food shopping on a grumbling tummy!

We came back with a whole assortment of ingredients (a gammon joint and leg of lamb…) with very few meals actually planned, but on opening the fridge with apprehension this morning I found some large field mushrooms (Portobello sized) and decided to stuff them.

This was a relatively faff free recipe and doesn’t take much thyme (ha) – it could easily be made vegetarian by omitting the pancetta and adding some tasty Spanish manchego.

Finely dice half an onion and gently fry until soft on a medium heat in a tbsp of olive oil. Finely chop the stalks of four field mushrooms and a couple of button mushrooms and add these to the onions. Add a tbsp of chopped fresh thyme, a minced plump garlic clove and some pepper. Let these all soften together – about 8 minutes or so.

In a separate frying pan slowly heat 50g smoked pancetta and then fry (it’s good to slowly heat the pan so the fat comes out of the pancetta this makes it tastier as it’s pig fat, but also better for you as you should have to add additional oil to fry).

Once the pancetta has coloured add it to your onions – carefully keeping as much of the pancetta fat in the pan as possible.

In the pancetta oil brown off the bottoms of the mushrooms and set onto a baking tray.

In a food processor whizz up 25g stale bread, a tbsp of olive oil, salt, pepper, a small bunch of curly leaf parsley and 20g grated parmesan.

Fill your mushrooms with the onion mixture and cover with the cheesy breadcrumbs, drizzle with olive oil, and a quick crack of black pepper and bake for 10 minutes at 180°C.