Mushroom Ragout (by G)

There is something about the word ragout that appeals to my senses, mostly my sense of hearing I guess. To limit my meat intake to a sustainable level I decided to do a mushroom ragout.  Of course, there are about a million ragout recipes all very slightly different in one way or another so I decided to add things until I was happy.

My original concept was to have a huge variety of mushrooms in the ragout but the range at the supermarket was limited and I also remembered that huge variety comes at a huge cost so I decided on using the little shimeji mushrooms and some regular field mushrooms - I also had some porcini in the cupboard so I decided to steep them in some hot water and add them to the pot for extra flavour.

The ragout was pretty simple fried mushrooms, stock, red wine, fake chicken stock, I had some peas so I added them, I forgot to get cream so I added some ricotta cheese I found in the fridge.

Probably the biggest disappointment of the evening was assuming I had couscous at home because I was going to cook some of that up in place of polenta but apparently I had already used all the couscous so I substituted it for some pasta.

The ragout turned out to be quite good a rich shade of grey that appeals to the eye.  I'm kind of glad I didn't end up getting a huge range of mushroom - sure the flavour would have been great but the blog photo would look pretty much exactly the same as the one below: