If Your Mama Likes it Hot: Chile-Baked Portabella Mushrooms with Eggs & Cheese

But where's my Mother's Day Margarita?
Oh, wait, it's not actually Mother's Day yet...

Old school Mother’s Day food is always such a yawner. Dainty stuff.  Little fruity pancakes or cute little muffins with flowers in a basket. Oh, PULEEZE. I just saw a Mother’s Day spread in a blog that had more flowers in it than the last funeral I went to. Give your mother REAL FOOD. After all, real work requires real food, and being a mom is real work.

Now, my idea of a Mother’s Day breakfast or brunch will involve some good food, and even a Margarita, or a hard cider. I filled a couple of big portabella mushrooms with a chile sauce, cheddar cheese and eggs.  A solid meal if you serve a nice bit of cornbread on the side and even a few slices of good, double smoked bacon. Ate it myself. Oh, mama!

These portabellas can really pack a wallop, depending how hot that chile sauce is under the innocuous looking eggs and cheese. The homemade hot pepper sauce I use in mine is medium hot; it’s derived from a recipe of Heidi’s over at the blog 101 Cookbooks called “A Tasty Frittata Recipe” that my friend Kasha and I have been making for a few years. Depending on the kind of peppers you use, and how many, the heat will vary. Make it hotter if your Mom can take the heat. Also, don’t expect the eggs to stay neatly in the mushrooms. They won’t, some will ooze into the bottom of the pan. It’s OK, this isn’t a beauty contest, and the fresh salsa can hide a lot of sins.

Minus any grain or meat side dishes, this will be a perfect choice for either a grain free, gluten free or vegetarian Mom.

Note: the sauce makes about a cup, and it keeps beautifully in the fridge for a couple of weeks, if it lasts that long. Freezes well, too. I eat this stuff on just about everything.

Chile-Baked Portabella Mushrooms with Eggs & Cheese

Serves one, easy to double, triple or quadruple.

For the Green Chile Sauce:

1 small bunch of cilantro, washed, dried

3 garlic cloves, peeled

2 large, green jalapenos, whole with top cap cut off

Big pinch of salt

Juice of a lime

½ teaspoon of smoked paprika

½ cup safflower oil or olive oil

Whirl everything in your blender or food processor, except the oil until finely minced and then drizzle in the oil. You may need a bit more oil to achieve the consistency you like.

Oiled and ready to pop in the oven.

The actual recipe part:

2 portabella mushrooms, about 4” diameter

Oil for pan and rubbing the mushrooms

4 heaping Tblsp of the green chile sauce above

3 oz. thin sliced very sharp cheddar cheese

2 eggs

1 cup fresh salsa, homemade or bought

Preheat the oven to 425°F.  Oil a shallow table-to oven baking dish that can hold the two caps side by side comfortably (we always want our mushrooms comfy). Cut the stem out of the mushroom, and scrape out the gills. Wipe the mushrooms clean with a damp paper towel. If you can, carve a little more out of the mushroom where the stem was to make the well big enough to hold the goodies. Just don’t cut through the cap. Oil the mushrooms inside and out and place dome up in the baking dish and cook for 8-10 minutes. Remove the pan from the oven and lower the heat to 400°F.

Easy on the inside cheese, you need to leave room for the egg.
You can top it up with as much cheese as you want!

Carefully flip the mushrooms cupped side up and put 2 T of the Green Chile Sauce into each one, then a thin slice of cheese. Carefully crack a egg into each one, and don’t worry if some of the egg white slides into the baking dish. Evenly distribute the remaining cheese over the eggs, leaving some of the yolk showing. Replace in the oven and bake 8- 10 minutes until the egg is done as you like and the cheese has melted. Remove, top with the fresh salsa and serve to Mom, with love.