After a week and a half of planning our meals based on recipes, I was feeling a little less than fulfilled. I missed the improv of coming home and trying to make a meal out of what I had, the creativity of not following a recipe. So I have decided to amend my original plan of planning meals with the caveat that at least one meal would be making doing with ingredients or riffing on a beloved recipe.

This week I got the opportunity because I realized, well actually Manatee realized, that my schedule for the week was insane and what was even crazier was the thought of pulling together a four course from scratch meal for my book club. He pleaded with me to ‘just order a pizza for the love of God.’ I think he was thinking Pizza Hut but I of course went ahead with Roman Candle. I mean, if you are going to order pizza, then at least do something good!

But of course I couldn’t just do that, I also had to make something so I decided to make the mushroom bread of yore. But then was thinking more about it and I had some Romano cheese I wanted to use up and Manatee wasn’t a big Swiss cheese fan so I decided to amend the recipe slightly and I have to say it I was really pleased with the result.

I, unfortunately, don’t have pictures because my book club (and Manatee when he got home) devoured it, but I will provide the recipe. Now, given my crazy schedule, I was literally throwing spices into the sauce so I made changes to the ratios but don’t have exact measurements so I will try to do approximations.

Ingredients:

1 round loaf bread (preferably day old ot make it easier to cut but doesn’t have to be)
8 oz. shredded Swiss cheese
8 oz. shredded Mozzzarella cheese
3-4 oz. shredded Romano Cheese
approx. 1/2 cup chopped sundried tomatoes
1 pear- cut into matchsticks and then cut those in half
6 oz. baby bella mushrooms, coarsely chopped
6 oz. regular mushrooms coursely chopped

Sauce:
3/4 cup butter
2 parts poppyseeds (1-1 1/2 Tbsp)
1 part ground mustard
1 part season salt
2 parts lemon juice
3 green onions, finely chopped

  1. Mix together cheeses, mushrooms, sundried tomatoes and pear in a bowl.
  2. Cut the bread in diagnol rows and then cross hatch to you have 1 to 1 1/2 inch cubes. Go almost to the bottom but make sure it is still attached. guests will need to pull apart the bread.
  3. Preheat the oven to 350.
  4. Place bread on foil. Stuff ingredients into the bread. Fill in all crevices.
  5. Melt sauce ingredients in a saucepan. As soon as butter is melted, remove from stove and pour over bread.
  6. Wrap bread with foil. At this point, really work to get the bread back into a round shape by pulling the foil tight across it.
  7. Put bread on cookie sheet and bake 40 minutes at 350.
  8. Remove, Unwrap and Enjoy!
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