With limited visits to the grocery store these days, testing our skills to create meals with little ingredients we have on hand somedays can be challenging. I had one of those days, with only a couple of veggies in the fridge, some beans in the house and some homemade basil pesto I had made from my garden. Luckily with some Portobellos on hand, I came up with baked mushrooms.
This dish came out a treat so delicious with the basil pesto and the crispy yet soft centred cannellini beans added a lovely texture. Juicy roasted mushrooms and tomatoes, topped with the halloumi cheese which I happened to find but if you have no cheese it’s still perfectly delicious as it is.
These are definitely weird times one we most certainly will never forget, we will be reading about it in history books, and retelling our grandchildren, great grandchildren about when the world shut down. It is still so mind boggling to think about. I guess like war times before us the stories seem unreal unless you have lived through it and we the lucky ones will hopefully be able to say too we have lived through such unsettling time in history.
As I am pescatarian and mainly live on vegetables I didn’t mind these ingredients to work with. My husband on the other hand isn’t a big lover of mushrooms, so it was all for myself though he did love the beans and the roasted tomatoes with some crusty Italian bread. Even better that I have left overs for breakfast a for filling start to the day.
Baked Halloumi Mushrooms with Roasted Tomatoes, Beans & Basil Pesto
Ingredients
3-4 portobello mushrooms stalks removed
1/2 tablespoon olive oil
400g can cannellini beans, drained and rinsed
1 punnet of cherry/grape tomatoes
salt and pepper to taste
180g haloumi cheese, sliced
Homemade basil pesto or store bought
grated lemon zest optional
Directions
- Preheat oven to 190’C fan forced.
- In a large baking dish add olive oil then place portobello mushrooms flesh/stalk side up in the dish.
- Scatter the cannellini beans and tomatoes around the mushrooms and season with salt and pepper.
- Bake in the oven for 15 mins until mushrooms are tender and tomatoes have blistered.
- Top the mushrooms with a teaspoon of basil pesto and then add two slices of haloumi cheese on top of each mushroom.
- Place back in the oven for cook for a further 5-10 mins until cheese and melted and browned.
- Add extra pesto if you like with some grated lemon zest.
- Serve with some crunchy bread
