Millet with Mushroom Cream Sauce

One of my favorite restaurants, if not my very favorite, is Macaroni Grill. (Keep this in mind if you ever feel the need to give me a restaurant gift card.) Anyway, whenever I go, I usually get the same thing: bowtie pasta in this amazing creamy mushroom sauce. Yep. It's my fave. Which is kind of funny cause I don't really like mushrooms. Let me correct myself. Mushroom flavor=yummy. Mushroom texture=weird. Because the texture throws me off so much, I usually shy away from making mushroom dishes. 


But the other day I had a crazy craving for my Macaroni Grill favorite that I just couldn't kick. So I decided to try my hand at making it myself. I had some millet in the pantry that I wanted to try. It's really super good for you (check this out if you're interested in millet's nutritional properties). I just toasted it in a pan with about 1 Tbsp. of olive oil for about 5 minutes and then prepared it according to the package directions (which basically meant boiling it like rice).

Millet post-toasting. (Note nice tan color).

The sauce turned out really, really yummy. Use it on millet, pasta rice, chicken, really it's good on whatever. Happy eating.

What you need

For the sauce

1 Tbsp. olive oil

1/2 onion

8 oz Mushrooms (I used baby bella)

2 large cloves garlic

1 Tbsp. butter spread

2 or 3 Tbsp. flour

1 tsp. salt

1/2 tsp. pepper

1 tsp. parsley

1/2 tsp. oregano

1/2 tsp. sage

1 1/2 c. milk

3 Tbsp. parmesan cheese


What you do
Heat the oil in a pan, add onion and cook for about 3-4 minutes before adding the chopped mushroom. Cook until onions are translucent. Add the minced garlic and cook only a minute or two. Add butter spread. When just melted, whisk in the flour and seasonings. It will be clumpy and gloppy. THAT IS OK! Quickly whisk in the milk, half and half.

Cut mushrooms