Stuffed Portabella Mushrooms and Broccoli Risotto

Last night's dinner and today's leftovers.  I bought a package of portabella mushroom caps on impulse at Earth Fare early in the week, and stuffing them just seemed like the thing to do.  The original plan was to make a stuffing mixture out of spinach and breadcrumbs (the incidental ones from when I made my own croutons for our Thanksgiving stuffing), but I made the mistake of adding too much of the nasty Chardonnay from last Friday to dampen the breadcrumbs, and the result was...nasty.  I realized this just as I was getting ready to spoon it onto the mushroom caps and ended up scrapping it and starting over sans breadcrumbs.  It was just as well - I wasn't sure how much stuffing these mushrooms would hold with the gills intact, so I just chopped up the spinach as finely as I could and mixed in a little lemon juice, pepper and feta.

Spinach and Feta-Stuffed Portabellas:
3 Portabella mushrooms, stems intact
1/2 cup fresh spinach, finely chopped
1/2 tbsp olive oil
1/2 tbsp lemon juice
pepper to taste
1/2 cup crumbled feta cheese

Preheat oven to 400 degrees.

Remove and finely chop stems from mushrooms.  Combine chopped stems with spinach, olive oil, lemon juice, pepper and about half (1/4 cup) of the feta cheese.  Spoon onto mushrooms, packing it with spoon.  Top mixture with remaining feta cheese, place on greased (or foil-covered) cookie sheet or shallow baking pan in oven for 20 minutes.

The risotto seemed as good a pairing with the mushrooms as any, plus I haven't made it in a while.  This didn't use anything out of the fridge except some veggie base, but it was still an easy side dish to whip up while the mushrooms were in the oven.

Broccoli Risotto:
2 tbsp Smart Balance or Earth Balance
1 cup onion, chopped (I thawed some chopped onion from the freezer)
1 cup arborio rice
3 cups vegetable broth (I used Better than Bouillon vegetable base)
1 cup frozen broccoli florets, thawed
1/2 cup freshly grated Romano cheese
fresh ground pepper

In a 2-quart saucepan, heat the Smart Balance over medium heat.  Add onion and saute until softened, about 3 minutes.  Stir in arborio rice and cook for one minute.  Begin adding hot broth to the rice mixture 1/2 cup at a time, stirring often, until the rice has absorbed that amount of liquid.  Repeat until the rice has absorbed all the broth.  Broccoli may be added at this point or at the same time as the last addition of broth.  Stir in Romano and pepper and serve.

Next up: something to dispense of all the parsley, cilantro, red cabbage and carrots in the bottom drawer...