Dorm Gourmet: Stuffed Mushrooms

INGREDIENTS:
1 whole sweet Italian sausage, uncooked
¼ cup of grated mozzarella cheese
5 oz. ricotta cheese
12 mushroom caps
salt and pepper

Are you looking to impress your fellow residents with an amazing appetizer that won’t leave you broke? This is an excellent recipe that will have people calling you the Gillson Gourmet in no time. 
Preheat the oven to 500°F, or the highest setting before broil. Do not set the oven to broil.  It will not help you with this recipe.

Once the oven has been preheated, place one sausage in the middle of a baking sheet and set this in the middle rack of the oven.  Cook for about six minutes, then flip the sausage over and cook again until both sides are golden brown and the middle appears cooked.  If you need to cut the sausage open to check, do it.  Trichonosis is not fun.  Once it is done, set it to the side to cool.  Do NOT turn off the oven yet.

Rinse your mushrooms; they are grown in sand.  Sand is not tasty.  The place for sand is at the beach.  If you’ve ever been to the beach, you will have noticed this.  Let the mushrooms sit in a bowl of cold water for a minute, then strain them.

Take your clean mushrooms and tear out the stems.  This should leave you with a hollow cap, ready for stuffing.

Take the sausage, which should be cool enough by now, and mince it into fine pieces.  Getting these pieces as small as possible is of dire importance.  If the pieces are too big, the flavor of the sausage will not get everywhere like you want it to.  I cannot stress this enough: get the sausage as fine as possible, and if you cut yourself, know that your body can be replaced; the respect of your peers cannot.  I’m not kidding, I’ve personally seen this happen.  Use up all that sausage.

In a bowl, or on a plate, or really any vessel with enough room for mixing stuff, combine 5 oz (1/3 container) of ricotta, a teaspoon of pepper, a few pinches of salt, ¼ cup of grated mozzarella and the sausage.

Fill the mushroom caps with the filling you just made. Put in enough so that the filling extends about ¼ inch over the top of the mushroom.  Smooth the filling into a dome.

Place the filled caps onto a baking sheet.  It can be the same one that you used for the sausage.  Greasing the pan is not terribly important because the mushrooms will bleed some of their water during cooking, so don’t worry about sticking.

Cook for about fifteen minutes, or until the filling is golden brown.

Serve on a lime colored plate to people.

Money saving tips:  Get salt and pepper from those little packets at the cafeteria—it’s the same stuff, but free.  Since this appetizer can feed a few people, get everyone who plans on eating to throw in a few bucks.