My Mushroom Sour Cream Sauce

There is a mushroom sauce recipe I make which is my personal favorite and one I am personally proud of.   Don't tell my family, but I usually linger in the kitchen to eat extra of this sauce with fresh bread.

Of course, I have to give credit where credit is due, I got the idea to make it from "Polish Heritage Cookery" by Robert and Maria Strybel (Hippocrene Books, 1993).  I was looking for a different sauce to pour on top of homemade golabki since my husband hates tomatoes and, even though I love them, every once in a while I go out of my way to accommodate his tastes.  The first time I tasted the sauce, I was immediately reminded of a sauce my mother would occasionally make which I was always a fan of as a child.



Ingredients:

2 packs of Mushrooms (This time I used the caps, sometimes just the stems, just depends on what I need the parts for)
1/4 Sweet Onion, diced and caramelized in Butter
2 tablespoons of Butter
1 tub of Sour Cream (16 oz.)
1 tablespoon Flour
1/2 to 1 cup Milk
salt and pepper
a few sprigs of Parsley, chopped
1 Glass of White Wine

Clean the Mushroom caps and slice.  In saucepan, cook until liquid from Mushrooms is gone.  Remove the Mushrooms and set to side with the Onion.  Melt butter, add the flour and stir to make a roux.  Add the Milk and stir on low until thickened and bubbly.  Stir for another couple of minutes.  Return the Mushrooms and Onion to the saucepan.  Add the White Wine and heat gently for a couple more minutes.  Add the Sour Cream and heat through very gently.  Add Parsley, salt and pepper to taste and serve.

Or, you could do it in this order:

Clean the Mushroom caps and slice.  In saucepan, cook until liquid from Mushrooms is gone.  Add the White Wine and deglaze the pan, if you need to.  Cook for a couple of minutes on low until the alcohol has cooked away.  Add the Onion.  Add the Sour Cream and heat very gently on low.  Stir the Flour into the Milk in a separate cup thoroughly, and pour into the saucepan, stirring constantly.  Continue stirring while heating the sauce on low heat until thickened and bubbly, then heat for another couple of minutes.  Add the parsley, salt and pepper to taste, and serve.

Some Side Notes:

The Wine can be skipped, and broth can be added instead, if you wish.  The order of the ingredients can be mixed around (I know professional chefs are probably screaming Noooo! right now but as a mommy who cooks food her family actually eats, who are pickier diners than some adults paying $100 for a dish, trust me, it will be OK). 

This isn't the best picture of it, as I had it out a couple of minutes waiting and waiting for everyone to get in place for the oplatki prayer and the Wigilia dinner.  But it tastes great!

This sauce or sauce is delicious served on golabki (for my meatless golabki recipe, check out http://polishmamaontheprairie.blogspot.com/2010/12/my-meatless-golabki.html), potatoes, breaded chicken, Kotleti Schabowe, rice or many other dishes.

When feeding younger palettes, wine is always reduced as much as possible to remove as much alcohol as possible or eliminated from the dish entirely.  Also, many people don't allow children to eat foods with alcohol in the sauce, that is at your discretion.  As long as the alcohol is cooked away, many European families do not feed their children something different than the rest of the family because exposing them to as broad a diet as possible expands their culinary palettes for the future.  Smacznego!