Mushroom sauce

One night I couldn`t sleep at all and out of nowhere "mushroom sauce" just popped in my head. Then my imagination on this sauce kept flowing...and next thing I knew I was writing down the ingredients and how to cook it.

Actually this is just a very simple sauce. Inspired by onion soup, I was thinking to make the creamy version of this soup, so creamy that makes it more like a sauce than a cream soup.

I chose shiitake and maitake mushrooms. Especially for maitake, I use this mushroom quite frequently in my cooking as it is cheap, easy to use (most of the time I just shred it with my hands, no need knife to do it), and also one of those mushrooms with anticarcinogenic benefits.

How to make:

- Chop the mushrooms (I used food processor to do this)

- Brown the chopped mushrooms with olive oil and garlic on medium heat, then set aside.

- Slice (or chop, if you prefer smaller chunks) onions. I used 2 medium sized onions.

- Caramelize them with olive oil in a sauce pan. It took about 30 mins on medium heat to get the onion beautifully caramelized and shrinks down like one third of the original volume.

Here is the onion at the beginning of the process:

And after 30 mins on medium heat:

- Add the mushroom and mix them well

- Here is just an OPTIONAL step, you may skip it of course: 

  add soybean sauce (Japanese shoyu) and butter.

I figured that I need to do something with the sauce because I`m not a fan of "sweet" soup and these 2 onions clearly bring out their sweetness to the mixture. So, the soybean sauce and butter will help to make this sauce a bit more savory.

- Then finally, add milk while adjusting the taste and consistency to your preference.

My first menu with this sauce is serving it with baked potato and parmesan cheese.Yum!

Then, today I was too lazy to cook and when he asked,"Do we have anything to eat?", I started gathering leftovers. Yeeess...I know, I`m a horrible wife, but hey, at least I was doing some efforts here :p

Anyway, I found rice, THIS SAUCE, and cheese in the kitchen.

Bake them in preheated oven at 180 C for 40 mins and those items would be Doria. Rice gratin in English perhaps?