Mushrooms With Sambuca And Soy Sauce
I love experimenting with interesting liquors.
I first tried this with some green beans, but the mushrooms are a definite improvement. They suit the flavours better, and they absorb some of them too.
Sambuca on its own is overwhelmingly sweet and cloying, but the soy sauce balances that nicely.

Mum has promised to try the sauce with aubergine, which might work too. Watch this space...

Brought to you by Karl™
Mushrooms With Sambuca And Soy Sauce
side meat
Serves 2

Ingredients
6 (large button) mushrooms, quartered
6 cloves garlic, roughly sliced
butter
small glass white wine
3 teaspoons Sambuca
1 teaspoon Shoyu soy sauce
1 Tablespoon reduced beef stock
Method
Set a serving dish to warm in the oven bottom
Heat a nice knob of butter and fry the roughly chopped garlic until it starts to take on a little colour.
If you have large mushrooms, you can quarter them, but you can leave small ones whole, in which case you should have rather more mushrooms - say a dozen or so smallish ones.
Add the mushrooms and shake them occasionally until they also take on some golden colour.
Add a small glass of white wine and let it bubble up then scoop out the mushrooms with a slotted spoon and pile them into the serving dish.
Reduce the white wine, then add the sambuca and reduce further, then add the stock and reduce to thicken. Finally add the soy sauce, tasting to avoid adding too much.
Now whisk in about 3 teaspoons or so of butter one at a time to thicken the sauce and give it a silky sheen, then pour it back over the mushrooms.

You can now keep the mushrooms, covered, in the bottom of the oven for as long as needed until ready to serve.
If the sauce is a little thin then leave them uncovered
It seems that letting them marinate like this for at least some time (half an hour) improves the flavour, and its penetration into the mushrooms.
Yum Yum!

You can use red wine as an alternative to the white wine and beef stock if you have vegetarians for dinner.
You definitely want to bake the mushrooms in their sauce in the oven for half an hour though.