Sausage Stuffed Mushrooms with Mascarpone

Week 487, and the tomatoes ripening, the corn arriving, the garden in full production, the heat in the kitchen. I am 68 years old and the days have a rhythm now — the morning writing, the afternoon visits to Cedarhurst, the evening cooking, the weekly blog post — and the rhythm is the structure, and the structure is the sanity, and the sanity is required because the rest of it, the losing and the loving and the carrying, requires a sane woman at the helm, and I am sane, mostly, except when I cry in the car in the Cedarhurst parking lot, which is not insanity but its opposite: the specific, targeted release of emotion in a contained space, which is the most rational thing I do all week.

Sukkot; three generations build sukkah; stuffed cabbage; impermanence. These are the facts of the week, the data points, the things I would put in a report if I were writing a report, which I am not — I am writing a life, and the life includes the facts but is not limited to them, because the life also includes the way the kitchen smells at six in the morning when the coffee is brewing and the challah is rising and the house is quiet and the quiet is both the grief and the peace, simultaneously, and the simultaneous is the condition, the permanent condition of a woman who is 68 and alone and not alone, who is a grandmother and a wife and a writer and a cook and a caregiver and all of these things at once, always at once, braided together like the challah.

I made stuffed cabbage this week — because it was what the week needed, because the week always needs something and the something is always food, and the food is always the answer, and the answer is always the kitchen, and the kitchen is always mine, and the mine-ness of the kitchen is the one thing that has not changed in sixty-seven years of living, from Sylvia's kitchen on the Grand Concourse to this kitchen in Oceanside where I stand every morning and every evening and many of the hours in between, making the food that is the chain, that is the love, that is the thing I do when I don't know what else to do, which is always, and especially now.

I brought food to Marvin at the usual time. The visit was what visits are now — quiet, steady, the feeding by hand when necessary, the reading aloud always, the holding of the hand that may or may not know it is being held but that is warm and alive and present, which is the definition of love in this particular year: warm and alive and present. He ate what I brought. He received what I gave. The receiving is the relationship. The receiving is the vow. In sickness and in health, in recognition and in forgetting, in the recliner and in the kitchen, the receiving is the marriage, and the marriage continues, one container at a time, one visit at a time, one day at a time, at two o'clock, every day, because the chain does not break.

I made stuffed cabbage because that is what the week asked for, but the truth is that any week asking for something stuffed is really asking for the same thing: the patience to take something whole, open it, fill it with care, and close it back up again. These sausage stuffed mushrooms with mascarpone are a smaller version of that same impulse — quicker, yes, but built on the identical faith that what you put inside a thing is what makes it worth eating, and that the filling is always, in the end, an act of love. I make them when I want the ritual of stuffing without the full afternoon, and I bring them to tables where people need to feel that someone thought carefully about what went inside.

Prep Time: 20 minutes | Cook Time: 25 minutes | Total Time: 45 minutes | Servings: 6 (about 18 mushrooms)

Ingredients

18 large white or cremini mushrooms, stems removed and reserved
1/2 lb sweet Italian sausage, casings removed
1/2 cup mascarpone cheese, room temperature
1/4 cup grated Parmesan cheese, plus more for topping
3 cloves garlic, minced
2 tablespoons shallot, finely minced
2 tablespoons fresh flat-leaf parsley, chopped
1/2 teaspoon dried thyme
1/4 teaspoon crushed red pepper flakes
Salt and freshly ground black pepper, to taste
2 tablespoons olive oil, divided
1/4 cup dry white wine or chicken broth

Instructions

Preheat and prep. Preheat your oven to 375°F. Lightly brush a rimmed baking sheet or baking dish with 1 tablespoon of the olive oil. Wipe the mushroom caps clean with a damp cloth and arrange them cavity-side up on the prepared pan.
Chop the stems. Finely chop the reserved mushroom stems. Set aside.
Brown the sausage. In a large skillet over medium heat, add the remaining tablespoon of olive oil. Add the sausage and cook, breaking it up with a wooden spoon, until browned and cooked through, about 6–8 minutes. Use a slotted spoon to transfer the sausage to a large mixing bowl, leaving the drippings in the pan.
Sauté the aromatics. In the same skillet over medium heat, add the shallot and garlic to the drippings and cook until softened, about 2 minutes. Add the chopped mushroom stems and cook, stirring occasionally, until they release their moisture and the pan is mostly dry, about 4 minutes. Add the white wine or broth and cook for 1 minute more, scraping up any browned bits. Remove from heat.
Make the filling. Add the mushroom stem mixture to the bowl with the sausage. Stir in the mascarpone, Parmesan, parsley, thyme, and red pepper flakes. Season generously with salt and black pepper. Mix until fully combined and creamy.
Fill the caps. Using a small spoon, mound the filling generously into each mushroom cap, pressing gently so it holds its shape. Top each with a light dusting of additional Parmesan.
Bake. Bake in the preheated oven for 20–25 minutes, until the mushrooms are tender and the filling is golden and bubbling at the edges. Let rest for 5 minutes before serving.

Nutrition (per serving)

Sausage Stuffed Mushrooms with Mascarpone — The Stuffed Things We Make When Love Requires It