Mushroom Stroganoff

One day, when having dinner at the in-law’s house, Mr. AA’s mum had made a beef stroganoff for the family; it had been YEARS since I’d eaten stroganoff – so a few days later, when it had finally eaten away at me enough, I called and asked her for her recipe. This is my [vegan, gluten free] version of it! It serves 6 hungry people and is freezer friendly.

Ingredients
750g Button Mushrooms, quartered or chopped fairly chunky (this is the “meat” of the dish)
1.5 Cups Cooked Kidney Beans (1x 440g tin)
1 Brown Onion, diced
3-4 Garlic Cloves, minced/finely chopped
140g Salt Free Tomato Paste
1-2 Cups of Stock (I used Massel “chicken” stock, which is gluten free)
A splash of red wine* (optional but highly recommended)
1 tsp tamari** or soy sauce
Cashew Cream (recipe follows)
A CRAPLOAD of freshly cracked pepper
2 TBSP Lemon Juice
Fresh Parsley (to serve)

• To make your cashew cream, blend 1/2 cup unsalted cashews with 1/2-3/4 cup water. If you don’t have a high speed blender, you may want to soak or blanch the cashews first so that your cream isn’t grainy. It should be really smooth.
• Sauté your onion. When it starts getting a bit of a tan, add the garlic, followed closely by the mushrooms.
• Add kidney beans, tomato paste, stock, wine, tamari/soy sauce & cashew cream. Stir through.
• Add a crapload of cracked pepper – go on, don’t be shy!
• Turn off the heat, stir through the lemon juice and serve on brown rice with fresh parsley.

OK – really, you could use any kind of rice/pasta/noodles… I’m just trying to encourage you to have healthy bowel movements. Let’s face it – nobody likes to be constipated.

*Traditionally, you would use sherry in stroganoff but since I’m not much of a booze hag, I don’t have any lying around at home. Red wine definitely does the trick here.

**Tamari is the gluten free version of soy sauce. If anyone eating this dish has celiac disease, make sure you do the right thing by them.

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EDIT: You may only need 1 cup of stock, depending on personal preference.