Shiitake Mushrooms in Lulu's Special Sauce!

This dish came about, because my mom had a grilled mushroom dish at a Japanese restaurant one time. She brought home some fresh mushrooms to experiment with. I decided to ask her what it tasted like. She told me that it was salty, sweet, and it had garlic. So, from her description I came up with this recipe! We usually use the dried ones in soups/porridge/sauteed with bamboo. I think the dried ones are a lot more flavorful, and are meatier. The fresh ones are a little more similar in taste to crimini mushrooms, but softer.

Here goes the directions:

1. Wash your mushrooms, clean off excess dirt.

2. Dry off your mushrooms. I placed them on one side of a CLEAN kitchen towel, let air dry.

3. I folded over the other side of the towel, over the mushrooms to soak off any excess water. You can use another towel to dry if you used more mushrooms than me.Let it dry for 30-60 minutes.

4. While the mushrooms are drying, it's time to start the sauce! In the measuring cup is about 1/2 cup of light soy sauce, 1/4 cup of rice wine. In the spoons starting from front to back: finely minced ginger, brown sugar, heaping spoonful of garlic, and add a little sesame seed oil. (Make sure to mince the ginger very finely. Ginger is very spicy if you bite into a large piece, so try and cut it up as small as possible.)

5. Mix all the above ingredients together, and whisk to dissolve sugar.

6. Now put the mushrooms into a large bowl, and pour the sauce over the mushrooms. Mix it very well so that the sauce will get into the gills of the mushroom.

7. Heat up a large non-stick pan with a little oil. Put the mushrooms in gill side up. Making sure that each mushroom is touching the pan. I had too many mushrooms to fit the pan, so I cooked them in 2 separate batches.

8. After you have them all in the pan, put a lid on it for about 3-5 minutes. Some juices may come out from cooking the mushrooms. Now is the point to start flipping the mushrooms over.

 9. After you flip them, cover the pan again. Cook it uncovered, so that the juices will evaporate.  It should look like the picture below when it's ready!

10. Dish it up!

11. Now this is a very important step! I actually poured all the sauce in with the mushrooms when I cooked the second batch. But you can do it this way too.

Pour the extra sauce into the pan, and let it simmer down. The sugar in the sauce will caramelize, and thicken the sauce a little bit. After you simmer down the sauce, pour it over the mushrooms. The sauce is amazing to eat with the mushrooms and rice!!!

Hugs and Kisses <3
Lulu