Pasta Ai Funghi (Italian Mushroom Pasta)
Prep Time: 15 minutes
Cook Time: 30 minutes
Total Time: 45 minutes
Servings: 2 servings
Impress your dinner guests with a buttery, savoury, vegetarian dish of mushrooms and white wine come together to make this classic Italian dish using basic ingredients.
Ingredients
- 20g dried mushrooms (or 100g fine chopped portabello/chestnut mushrooms)
- 1 tbsp olive oil
- 1 tbsp butter (or 1 extra tbsp olive oil)
- ½ onion, peeled and finely diced
- ½ carrot, diced
- ½ stick celery, diced
- 2 garlic cloves, peeled and crushed
- 2 sprigs fresh thyme, leaves picked
- 250g chestnut mushrooms, cut into thin, roughly ½cm-thick slices
- 100g chopped tomatoes (fresh, not tinned)
- 3 tbsp dry sherry or white wine (sub apple juice)
- 200g broad pasta (tagliatelle or pappardelle)
- Extra-virgin olive oil and finely grated parmesan, to serve (both optional)
Method
Make a mushroom stock by grinding the dried mushroom to a powder then stir into a bowl filled with 100ml hot water, to make a paste. Leave to infuse.
If using fresh portabello/chestnut mushrooms here, shallow "fry" at a medium heat in water and top up as needed. It will leave a dark mushroom jus. Make up to 100ml when done. You can also use 100ml water mixed with a tablespoon miso paste - definitely not on the traditional list, but the point here is to make an umami rich stock of around 100ml.
Heat the oil and butter in a wide pan over a medium-low heat and fry the onion until golden and translucent.
Add the carrot and celery, fry until softened, stirring regularly, then add the garlic and thyme and fry for another 30 seconds.
Turn up the heat, add the fresh chestnut mushrooms and fry, stirring regularly, until they have slumped, browned and no longer give off steam. Add the sherry or wine (or apple juice), sizzle until most of the liquid has evaporated, then add the tomatoes and the mushroom stock and stir well.
Bring to a simmer, then turn down the heat, cover and leave to cook gently for about 10 minutes, until thick.
In the meantime, cook the pasta in plenty of well-salted boiling water, according to the packet instructions.
Season the sauce to taste, then drain the pasta, saving a little of the water. Put the pasta into the pan with the sauce and toss well to coat, adding a splash or two of the reserved cooking water if the sauce seems too thick to coat the pasta evenly. Finish with a drizzle of extra-virgin olive oil and serve with grated parmesan or similar.
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