Name: Fried mushrooms on fried bread
Prep time: 15 min
Total time: 22 min
Yield: 2 servings
Ingredients: 1 pack Mushrooms (tinned); 150 g Plain flour; 4 g Garlic (dried, granules); 2 g Mixed herbs (dried); 10 ml Worcestershire sauce; 40 ml Vegetable oil (sunflower or rapeseed); 2 g Black pepper (ground); 3 g Salt (fine)

Fried mushrooms on fried bread

An established dish converted to shelf-stable ingredients. Every substitution is documented below.

How long it keeps

About 6 months, set by Plain flour.

Indicative, for planning a build before you buy. The answer for a pack you already own is the best before date printed on it, and that only holds if it has been stored as the label says.

Serves

Burners

Pans

Water

0.2 L

Active

15 min

Total

22 min

Ingredients

Mushrooms (tinned) 1 pack
Plain flour 150 g
Garlic (dried, granules) 4 g
Mixed herbs (dried) 2 g
Worcestershire sauce 10 ml
Vegetable oil (sunflower or rapeseed) 40 ml
Black pepper (ground) 2 g
Salt (fine) 3 g

The entire dish turns on drying the mushrooms. Straight from the tin they are waterlogged, and waterlogged mushrooms steam grey however hot the pan is.

Drain them, tip them onto a cloth or a plate, press them, and leave them while you make the bread. Then dry them again.

Flatbread: 150 g flour, salt, about 90 ml water. Knead a minute, divide in two, press thin. Fry in oil, 90 seconds a side, until blistered. Set aside.
Same pan, hot, more oil. Mushrooms in one layer and left alone for three minutes. Do not stir: that is the browning happening.
Turn, another two minutes. Garlic granules, herbs and pepper for thirty seconds.
Worcestershire sauce around the edge of the pan so it sizzles and reduces rather than making everything wet.
Straight onto the fried bread.

Worcestershire sauce is anchovy, tamarind and vinegar, which is exactly the savoury-sour depth mushrooms want and nothing else in the cupboard provides.

Serves 2.

What this was adapted from

Mushrooms on toast: the English supper, rebuilt around a pan flatbread

fresh mushrooms → tinned mushrooms, drained and dried hard

Fresh mushrooms brown because they release water and then run dry. Tinned ones arrive wet and will steam unless you dry them properly first -- done right they do brown, and they are the only shelf-stable mushroom with any texture.
buttered toast → flatbread fried in oil

No bread and no butter. A flour-and-water flatbread takes four minutes in the pan and, fried rather than dry, gives the richness the butter would have.