Mushroom Pasta

I had this yesterday as couldn't be bothered to cook anything (that takes up a lot of time), too much television to watch! I cook this ALL the time it's mine and Becky's favourite meal - and the easiest thing to make as well, top bananas!

Fortunately I have the recipe on the My Dish site already, so I can give you the full breakdown and just show some pictures from the meal I actually made. I only had a few button mushrooms and porcini available but you makes what you can with whats you got!

Ingredients
• 15g Porcini
•  Handful Button/Closed Cap Mushroom
•  Handful Chestnut/Shitake Mushroom
•  1 Small Onion/ a few shallots
•  Garlic
•  Veg Bouillon Powder for the veggies/or home made Chicken stock
•  Double Cream
•  Parsley
•  Parmesan
•  Linguine preferably but spaghetti will do

Recipe

Boil Kettle and add half a pint of water to the stock of your choice with the 15g Porcini, stir then leave to soak for 15minutes

Finely chop the onion or shallots and add to a pan on a medium heat with a glug of olive oil

Chop the raw mushrooms (not the soaking porcini) into diffferent sizes, some sliced, some cubed, etc

Turn the pan down a bit

Add 1 clove chopped garlic to the onion and stir.

Add the chopped mushrooms, stir and then add salt and pepper to help the mushrooms give up their juice and take on the pepper.

After 10 minutes of occasional stirring, your porcini should be nicely soaked. Firstly, fill up the kettle and switch it on. Then, using a sieve, strain the porcini soaking water (the half a pint) into the pan with everything else, and stir.

Empty the sieve onto a chopping board and chop the reserved porcini mushrooms up a bit then add them to the pan. Be careful that you leave any grit from the porcini in the sieve and don't let it fall onto the chopping board else you risk adding it to the pan.

Turn the gas/heat back up to medium or higher as you want to start evaporating the liquid.

Pour the water from the kettle into a large saucepan, put it on the hob and add salt, wait till it comes back up to the boil, then add as much pasta as you want to the pan.

As the liquid stock reduces, your pasta should be cooking nicely. When the liquid has almost gone, add 3/4's of a small pot of double cream to the pan (I can't remember off hand the size but the smallest one you can get) and stir continuously. If you have one use a silicone spatula as it's easier to get all the bits off the side of the pan and keeps the sides clean.

When the pasta is ready and the sauce is nice, thick and creamy, strain the pasta, then add it to the mushroom sauce pan along with a small amount of cooking water to loosen the sauce a bit.

Add parsley to the pan and stir, then serve with parmesan and garlic bread.

The End

PS: It's essentially the ingredient list for a mushroom risotto but I swopped it for pasta. It works just as well both ways. If you really want to be snazzy, buy some summer black truffles (basically the cheapest ones you can get), slice with truffle slicer and marinate in truffle oil (you can get it from any supermarket) then sprinkle a few shavings over the dinner. Yum!

The pics below follow in the order they were made so use this maybe if your reading the recipe. Enjoy!