Creamy mushroomy pasta
All I need to say to introduce this recipe is that I love mushrooms. They’re my favourite vegetable (I know, they’re not even technically plants, but let’s talk in culinary terms), and combined with carbs and cheese they make my heart sing and my stomach happy.
This recipe is a combination of two delicious recipes which I’ve come across over the years. The first is smitten kitchen’s mushroom marsala pasta bake. I love this pasta dish - the richness of the mushrooms and the creamy mozzarella work so well together and it’s a great wintery dish on a cold day. The second is a baked leek gnocchi by Emily English which I came across on Instagram (every time I watch this video I cry a little inside when she drops the dish in the oven). The sauce in this recipe is the real winner, with a good amount of parmesan and mustard added to the crème fraîche to make it tangy and savoury.
My creamy mushroomy pasta is essentially the love child of those two recipes, uniting the mushroomy-ness of the pasta bake with the creaminess of the gnocchi sauce. This ultimately gives a really satisfying mushroom sauce which pairs brilliantly with a twisty pasta (I’ve used some gigli pasta from Tesco in the photos for this recipe, but a classic fusilli also works well). To stop the sauce from being too rich, I’m using a roux with vegetable stock and a good dollop of crème fraîche rather than going down the cream route. This keeps the meal a bit lighter while still keeping it nice and creamy. Finishing off with a generous handful of parsley also helps to lighten up the dish and adds a bit of colour at the end.
While you can save the leftovers for another day (add a splash of water before reheating to rehydrate the sauce a bit), I would recommend eating it fresh from the pan before the sauce has too much of a chance to soak into the pasta. Let me know if you give it a try, I’d love to know what you think!
Creamy mushroomy pasta
Serves: 4 | Time taken: 45 mins | Source: vicki cooks veggie
Ingredients
300g (10oz) pasta - I recommend something like fusilli or gigli, something with plenty of twists to hold the creamy sauce
1 tbsp rapeseed oil (or other vegetable oil)
300g (10oz) chestnut mushrooms
2 cloves garlic
3 sprigs thyme (about ½ tsp’s worth of leaves) - I’ve also made this with rosemary and it works well
¼ tsp fine sea salt
25g (1oz) unsalted butter
1.5 tbsp plain flour
300ml (1 ¼ cups) vegetable stock (I make mine with 1 stock cube)
200g (7oz) crème fraîche
40g (⅓ cup) vegetarian Italian hard cheese, finely grated
1 tsp mustard - I use wholegrain but whatever you have to hand will work
Handful of parsley, chopped
Method
Start by chopping 300g chestnut mushrooms into small pieces (they don’t need to be too uniform). Crush and finely chop the two cloves of garlic, and pull the leaves off the thyme.
Put a large non-stick pan on a medium heat and heat 1 tbsp rapeseed oil. Once the oil is hot, add the mushrooms, garlic and thyme to the pan with ¼ tsp fine sea salt. Cook the mushrooms, stirring occasionally, for 5 - 10 minutes until the mushrooms brown and begin to release their juices. In the meantime, boil a kettle and make up your 300ml of vegetable stock.
Add the 25g butter to the pan, and stir until melted. Sprinkle in 1.5 tbsp plain flour and cook it out for a minute, stirring constantly.
Once the flour has absorbed all of the butter, lower the heat and add ¼ of the stock at a time, stirring well between pours to incorporate it into the flour. Wait until the sauce has thickened slightly before adding more stock.
Once all the stock has been added, simmer on a low heat for 10 minutes, adding another ¼ tsp of salt if needed.
In the meantime, cook your pasta as per the packet’s instructions.
Once the sauce has simmered for 10 minutes, stir in 200g of crème fraîche, 1 tsp mustard, 4 tbsp of the grated hard cheese and a handful of chopped parsley. Add in the drained pasta along with a good grinding of black pepper and stir well to combine. Serve immediately with the rest of the cheese sprinkled on top and some more black pepper.