Mushroom Delight

Speed is sometimes of the essence when knocking out a dish but that doesn’t mean that the taste buds have to suffer. This is one of my firm favourites that will take mere minutes to prepare.

Preparation: 20 minutes
Cooking: 3-4 minutes
You’ll need a frying pan.

Ingredients
Fresh mushrooms of your choice (sliced)
A large knob of butter (nothing else works quite as well)
A small sprig of fresh thyme
Salt and fresh ground black pepper
Rye bread, or any other brown loaf
Finely sliced pancetta (or thin cut streaky bacon)
Grated Parmesan cheese
Halved cherry tomato to garnish
It really doesn’t matter what kind of mushrooms you use, but there is something extra special about using ones you’ve picked yourself. 
I’ve done this with giant puffball (exquisite) King oyster mushrooms (meaty) and hand- picked broad field mushroom (delicious).  

The pancetta and light dusting of parmesan really bring out the earthy flavour of the mushroom. It sits well on rye toast, but any brown bread will work. 

My pictures show the dish served on a toasted, crusty roll – sometimes you just have to work with what you’ve got, but delicious nonetheless!

Get cooking...
Melt the butter in a frying pan, throw in the sprig of thyme and fry the sliced mushrooms. 

Grill the pancetta while the mushrooms are cooking – it will only take a couple of minutes to get it crispy, but don’t burn it. 

Toast your bread at the same time. Remove the thyme once the mushrooms have taken on some colour and serve them on top of the toasted bread. 

Cap with a couple of pieces of pancetta and dust with a little grated Parmesan before garnishing with a halved cherry tomato.