These days we are super expressive about love on Valentine’s Day. We gift our loved ones roses, chocolates, jewelry, and what not. We literally “wear our hearts on our sleeves”. While reading about Valentines Day, I came across an interesting trivia regarding the origin of this phrase. Apparently, in the Middle Ages, during a Roman festival honoring Juno (a roman goddess), single men drew names to decide who would be their lady friend. Then they would wear the name of the lady on their sleeve for the rest of the festival, hence the term “wearing your heart on your sleeve”. My husband, Kalpesh didn’t wear his heart on his sleeve this Valentine’s Day. He did something better, he painstaking prepared this recipe for my blog and nicely arranged it in the shape of a heart on a plate.
Kalpesh asked me to make white sauce. I didn’t mind that one bit, it was hardly any work at all compared to preparing the stuffed tomatoes. That was one labor-intensive job. His labor of love, Kalpesh called it. :-) Devansh ate 1-2 stuffed tomatoes but after that he just wanted to eat white sauce. Kalpesh and I liked the combination of stuffed tomatoes with white suace. Kalpesh had made stuffed tomatoes in mushroom sauce earlier. (I’ll share that recipe too, soon hopefully.) He made this slight variation to suit Valentine’s Day post. Thank you soooo much Kalpesh for all the effort, right from getting the ingredients, to slogging in the kitchen. Definitely your best Valentine’s Day gift ever.
I hope you and your loved ones enjoy this recipe and have a wonderful, Valentine’s Day.
Mushroom and Cheese-stuffed Cherry Tomatoes
Ingredients
Ingredients for white sauce
- 2-3 cloves of garlic grated
- 1 tbsp wheat flour
- 1 tbsp butter
- 1 cup milk
- Grated cheese I used one cube
- Pinch of black pepper powder
- Salt to taste
Ingredients for stuffed tomatoes
- Cherry tomatoes approx. 20
- Finely chopped button mushrooms approx. 7-8
- One clove of garlic grated
- One cube of cheese grated
- Dried mixed herbs oregano, parsley, basil, chili flakes
- Approx. 1/4th tsp olive oil
- Butter as required
Instructions
White sauce
- Heat a non-stick pan on low flame and then add butter, add grated garlic and sauté for about half a minute. (Don’t sauté for too long else the garlic will change color.)
- Add wheat flour and sauté till it’s cooked properly to ensure you don’t get raw flour taste in the sauce. This should take a minute or two. (I don’t use refined flour while making white sauce, so my sauce doesn’t turn up white exactly but I’m OK with that.)
- Add milk and mix properly such that no lumps remain in the mixture. (It’s better to add about 1/4th of the milk initially and mix it well with the flour, and then add the remaining milk.)
- Add grated cheese and mix it well.
- Add black pepper powder and stir till the sauce thickens.
- Add salt and then turn off heat. (Processed cheese contains salt, so add salt sparingly.)
- Ingredients for mushroom-cheese stuffed cherry tomatoes recipe
- Tomatoes face down on a paper tissue
- Cherry tomatoes stuffed with mushrooms and cheese
Stuffed tomatoes
- Heat a pan, add some butter and grated garlic, and sauté for a minute.
- Add chopped mushrooms and mixed herbs, and sauté till the water released by mushrooms evaporates.
- Allow the sautéd mushrooms to cool. Meanwhile, cut a thin slice off the top of each tomato and scoop out the pulp.
- Keep the tomatoes face down on a paper tissue to drain for 5-10 minutes.
- Stuff each tomato first with sautéd mushrooms and then cheese. (Keep some sautéd mushrooms aside.)
- Heat a non-stick pan and grease it with olive oil.
- Take the pan off the flame while you arrange the stuffed tomatoes on it.
- Dip each stuffed tomato in sautéd mushrooms so that the grated cheese on top is covered completely. (This is done to ensure that cheese doesn’t stick to the pan.)
- Lay all the tomatoes face down on the pan and cover the pan. (I wanted the tomatoes to retain their red color, so I cooked them face down. If you’re not really keen on retaining their bright red color, you can cook them with the cut side up. You don’t need to coat the top with mushrooms then. The melted cheese on top looks quite lovely.)
- Cook the tomatoes over low heat for about five minutes.
- Arrange the tomatoes on a plate in the desired shape and then pour white sauce over it.
- P.S. One of these days I’m going to quit procrastinating and buy an OTG, and bake these tomatoes. That’ll be simpler than cooking them on stove top, I’m sure. As I’ve mentioned in the past, I stopped using a microwave after I got pregnant. After reading about how it destroys all the nutrients in food, I’ve since discarded it altogether. (I sold it as scrap for 500 rupees last year.)
