Easy Mushroom White Wine Cream Sauce Recipe

One of the things I pride myself on is being able to re-invigorate leftovers into other meals. After a fondue party last year, I had a handful of mushrooms that were left over. I also had various bottles of leftover wine (it was a wine potluck), including a white wine that was open. And, there was a small carton of cream that was in my fridge from a guest who had left it behind after making a chocolate fondue.

To extend the mushrooms and the wine into a full meal (which I also enjoyed with a glass of red wine!), I made this vegetarian and super ridiculously easy mushroom white wine cream sauce recipe.

I put mine on pasta, but these does equally well on rice, or on chicken, pork, etc. As a sauce on protein, this would be enough for 4 people! But on pasta, this was just enough for 2.

Ingredients:

• Olive oil
• 1/4 cup of diced onion (I always keep a frozen bag of diced onion in the freezer!)
• 1 minced garlic clove
• 5 mushrooms, thinly chopped
• 1/2 of a vegetable stock cube: just cut the solid rectangle in half. If you use chicken stock depending on how strong the flavor you may want to use 1/4 instead
• 1/4 cup white wine
• 1/2 cup heavy cream

Directions:

1. In a pan on medium heat, heat a little olive oil. Add the diced onion for a couple minutes until it becomes translucent.
   
2. Then, add, garlic and mushrooms and saute until the mushrooms so that the garlic is not so raw. You don’t need to brown the mushrooms, so this will only take a few minutes.
   
3. Reduce the heat to low, and carefully pour in the wine. Simmer until the wine has been absorbed by the mushrooms, which should take 5 minutes or so.
   
4. Crumble in the 1/2 of a vegetable stock cube, and pour in the 1/2 cup of cream. Raise the heat to medium-low, and let it simmer and thicken, about  5-7 minutes.
   

It’s pretty crazy right? I can easy pop in 5 mushrooms in my mouth off a vegetable tray. But, here the 5 mushrooms really last by chopping it up into all these little bits into a pretty mushroom-y sauce to take full advantage of the flavor of mushroom.

This recipe is so easy, I was making the pasta, the sauce, texting with my family, and talking to F all at the same time. But, it’s such a satisfying sauce, and dinner.

Do you have any special recipe or trick to transform leftovers into another meal? How do you stretch an ingredient?