Pepperoni stuffed mushrooms

Last weekend I was invited to a lady friend’s house to celebrate her 50th birthday, beings I am a little bit past that milestone myself I thought I would surprise her and pull out something special for her. Now sometimes you just have to do with what you got and that in and of itself is a challenge, but this time I went with one thing in mind. To make something really good for Gloria that she would remember when she looked back on her milestone day in the scrapbook of life. Hey TV Chef’s can think in abstract ways to sometimes.

Anyway, Since everybody was in the party spirit and nobody remembered to bring any appetizers I thinking on my feet grabbed one of the cookbooks off the bookshelf and found this little number and quickly made a list of ingredients, sent one of the grandkids to the store, took inventory of the cabinets. Yep, you guessed it I was on my own, so because I heard my grandfather in my head saying “boy, you gotta be ready for when the sh*t hits the fan” I threw caution to the party animals and this is what came out of the oven 25 minutes later.

Pepperoni stuffed mushrooms -- Here we go...

24 large button mushrooms

2 tablespoons butter

1 onion, minced

3/4 cup diced pepperoni

3 clove garlic, minced

1/2 cup crushed buttery round crackers

1 cup grated Parmesan cheese

1/2 teaspoon dried oregano

salt & black pepper

3/4 cup beef broth

Here’s how it works

Preheat oven to 325 degrees grab a baking sheet and smear on some Crisco or butter. Then start pulling off the stems of the mushrooms, I rinsed them to make sure there wasn’t any dirt or bits of worm stuff let behind, set them aside on a paper towel. Melt the butter in a skillet over medium heat. Add the mushroom stems, onion, pepperoni, garlic to the butter. Cook until the onions are tender. Stir in the cracker crumbs, Parmesan cheese, oregano, salt & pepper, beef broth cook until everything has binded together. At this point you can either drop this mixture into a big bowl or just leave it in the skillet to cool down to room temp.

Next start by stuffing the mushroom caps with the pepperoni mixture place them on the baking sheet hit them with a little Parmesan cheese, shove em in set the timer for 25 minutes, go get a Margarita.

The last step

At the ding, pull them out, poke one or two of the mushrooms with a toothpick if it comes out clean you are in business. Top with a shot of any kind of cheese shove em back in for 5 minutes until the cheese melts. By this time the party was going at a good clip with the margarita’s getting stronger, everybody was ready for the mushrooms. I guess if you were to measure success by the amount of time it took for them to ask for more then this was a hit.

Now at the time I didn’t get the author of the cookbook’s name and until I go visit Gloria again I won’t remember then either but I would really like to thank them and give them the credit for this day. So Happy birthday and don’t forget the margarita mix!!!