Baked Shumai Stuffed Mushrooms in Tomato Sauce

As you can probably tell by the title, this dish has a Chinese and Italian inspiration. Shumai is one of my favorite dim sum dishes and how can you ever go wrong with Italian style tomato sauce. The mushrooms are a perfect vessel to bridge the two dishes together. This shumai is made of ground pork and shrimp and the tomato sauce has a hint of cream to help balance out the natural acidic flavor of the tomatoes.

Tomato Sauce Ingredients:

1 can San Marzano tomatoes (28 oz)
4 garlic gloves (minced)
1 large shallot (minced)
5 sprigs fresh basil (finely chopped)
1 tablespoon olive oil
4-5 sprigs fresh thyme
2 tablespoon dry oregano
1 teaspoon dry crushed chili peppers
1 tablespoon garlic powder
1/2 tablespoon kosher salt
1/2 tablespoon black pepper
2 bay leaves
1/4 cup heavy cream
4 ounces mozzarella cheese (thinly sliced or grated to spread on top of dish)

Preheat a stock pot with olive oil on medium high heat for 1-2 minutes. Then add the garlic and shallots, cook until shallots are translucent (about 3 minutes). Add the tomatoes with the sauce from the can and begin crushing the tomatoes with a wooden spoon in the pot. Add the basil, thyme, oregano, chili peppers, salt, black pepper and bay leaves. Bring the heat down to a simmer and cover the pot. Let this continue cooking while creating the shumai stuffed mushrooms and stir every 5 minutes. Stir in the cream in the last 5 minutes before adding to the mushrooms.

Shumai Ingredients:

9-10 large button mushrooms (stem removed and saved for stuffing)
1/2 pound ground pork
1/2 pound shrimp (finely chopped)
2 scallions (finely chopped)
1 teaspoon grated ginger
2 tablespoon light soy sauce
1 teaspoon kosher salt
1 teaspoon black pepper

Accompaniments:

Pasta (Spaghetti or Angel Hair is perfect for this)
Garlic bread

Preheat the oven to 350 degrees

Finely chopped the stems of the mushrooms and add to a mixing bowl. Then add the pork, shrimp, scallions, ginger, soy sauce, salt, and black pepper. Gently mix all the ingredients in the bowl. Take the mixture and stuff the hollow area of the mushrooms, I like to over stuff mine and have quite a bit of the stuffing stick out from the mushrooms.

Place the mushrooms in a cast iron skillet (I like using a cast iron skillet because it retains heat and keeps the food nice and hot while serving) or casserole dish with the stuffing side up. Add the tomato sauce and cover entire contents. Bake for 30 minutes and then add the mozzarella cheese on top of each of the mushrooms. Continue baking for another 20 minutes to allow the cheese to melt into the dish. Carefully remove the dish with oven mits and serve with pasta and garlic bread.