Spinach Stuffed Mushrooms

A taste of homey Italy in Ukiah

Where: 131 E. Mill St., Ukiah
When: Lunch Mondays through Fridays from 11 a.m. to 2 p.m. Dinner Mondays through Saturdays from 4 to 9:30 p.m. Closed Sundays
Reservations: Call 462-2141
Price range: Moderate to expensive, with entrées from $11.95 to $20.95
Wine list: 1 star
Ambiance: 2½ stars
Service: 3 stars
Food: 2½ stars
Overall: 2½ stars


4 stars: Extraordinary
3 stars: Very good
2 stars: Good
1 star: Not very good
0 stars: Terrible

The natural wood frame building has a rustic, Old West look. Three gazebos hold tables for dining along a side yard where kids can run and play, and where Asian lanterns hang from the trees, promising soft summer evenings.

Inside, Simona Petri glides from the kitchen bearing steaming plates of pasta. It's a homey place kids will never forget and families will return to time after time. As long as children love spaghetti and meatballs, there will be a Simona's — or a facsimile thereof — nearby.

A big list of daily specials greets you when you enter. One recent night, the list included seven different ravioli, all served with white sauce. You could choose among prosciutto and gorgonzola, spinach and ricotta, chicken and mushrooms, butternut squash, and mushrooms, all $18.95; fire-roasted tomato, basil and mozzarella, $18.45, and crab, $19.45.

Besides the ravioli, the board listed a lamb chop entrée and linguini pescatore with red or white sauce for $18.95 each, plus chicken duchessa (thin slices of chicken topped with mozzarella and a lemon cream sauce) for $19.95 and calamari steak with lemon sauce for $17.95.

If those prices seem a little steep for a modest, semi-retro Italian restaurant, the Petris offer an additional list of $10 daily specials. Examples are tricolor cheese tortellini with marinara sauce, grilled chicken and spinach cannelloni, and sausage tortelloni with meat sauce.

These entrees piqued my curiosity. What's the difference between tortellini and tortelloni?

According to “The Encyclopedia of Pasta,” a 374-page book originally written in Italian and published in English by the University of California Press, there is no entry for tortelloni. I checked Webster's New World Italian Dictionary with the same result.

Wikipedia has it: “Tortelloni are stuffed pasta, the same shape as tortellini but larger.” Now we know, although somewhat unconvincingly.

Eating Low Carb A Sacrifice? Not with Boursin, Sausage, & Spinach ...

If you are feeling a bit sorry for yourself about the sacrifice you’re having to make by eating low carb, then this is the recipe for you. Maybe you’re missing pizza, or loaded baked potatoes, or pastries (all of the above for me!). Once you taste these stuffed mushrooms, you’ll forget about those things and you won’t feel the least bit deprived. In fact, you’ll feel indulgent. While friends on other calorie counting diets won’t be able to have boursin cheese, cream, and sausage, you can eat them without guilt.

This is another of my recipes to be used as inspiration. Feel free to take the general concept and tweak it to your tastes. If you don’t like an ingredient I’ve used, substitute another. If you want to add another item, try it and let me know how it was.

For this recipe, I used portobellini mushrooms. These portobellos are medium sized. They are not as large as as the giant portabellos that you may be used to seeing. Any size will work just fine on this recipe. You may have to adjust the cooking time. Just clean the mushrooms (by rubbing – don’t wash as they absorb water and get slimy) and remove the stems to make room for the filling.

For the filling, I first cooked some Italian sausage, which came from my favorite charcuterie, Pine Street Market . This particular sausage came in the casing, which I removed before browning. I used about 2 1/2 large links of the sausage, but you can adjust the quantity to suit your tastes. After cooking the sausage, I allowed it to cool before adding to the remaining mushroom filling.

Next, I used a round of Garlic & Herb Boursin cheese, which is one of my favorite ingredients. In a bowl, combine the boursin with about 1/4 cup cream to loosen the cheese, making it easier to incorporate the other ingredients. Then, mix in about 1 tsp salt, 1/4 cup chopped oil packed sun dried tomatoes, 1/4 cup chopped roasted red peppers, and 3/4 cup torn baby spinach. After the sausage has cooled, add it to the mixture.

Once the filling is complete, simply stuff the mushrooms and bake for about 20 minutes at 400’. You may need to adjust the cooking time based on the size mushrooms you use. Bake until the mushrooms appear slightly wilted and the filling is slightly browned and warm to the touch.

After eating these mushrooms, my husband promptly requested them again for an upcoming meal. In his words, “If we had more of these, I might eat them until I died.

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