Fresh Pasta with Mixed Mushrooms and Parmesan
Fresh pasta with mixed mushrooms — button, portobello and oyster mushrooms — fried in butter with thyme and sage and finished under the grill with Parmesan. A trattoria dish in 30 minutes.
The mixture is the point: each mushroom brings something different. Button mushrooms bring substance, portobello depth and colour, oyster mushrooms an almost meaty texture. One kind alone makes a flatter dish.
And they are fried over enough heat for their water to evaporate. Crowded in the pan they steam in their own juices and turn grey instead of brown — better in two batches.
Ingredients
- 400 g fresh pasta (ribbons, penne or fusilli)
- 600 g mixed mushrooms (button, portobello, oyster)
- 30 g butter
- Extra virgin olive oil
- Fresh thyme and sage
- Chives, chopped
- Grated Parmesan
- Pouring cream (to serve)
- Salt, to taste
Method
- 1
Cut the mushrooms into pieces. Fry them in a pan with the butter and a splash of olive oil along with the thyme and chopped sage for 10 minutes, until they are tender and have lost their water. The heat has to be enough for that liquid to evaporate: if the pan is too full the mushrooms boil in their own juice and come out grey instead of golden, so with 600 g it is worth doing them in two batches.
- 2
Cook the fresh pasta in plenty of salted water until al dente. Drain and drizzle with olive oil.
- 3
Divide the pasta between individual dishes and cover with the fried mushrooms. Grate plenty of Parmesan over the top.
- 4
Brown in a hot oven for 4 minutes until the cheese is golden.
- 5
Serve with fresh chopped chives over the top and, if you like, a bowl of cream to moisten it to taste.