A favorite of Ana’s, this is her go-to dish when she wants to impress but doesn’t have much time to cook. She likes to use Maggie Beer’s recipe for fresh pasta and sometimes adds cracked pepper to the dough for an extra kick. Dried mushrooms also work well for the sauce if fresh ones aren’t available – save a little of the liquid after they’ve been rehydrated in water and add to the sauce for a deeper, earthier flavour.
Serve with a crisp green salad and organic sourdough. Serves four.
Butter (organic), 250 grams
Cream, 300 ml
Chevre (goat’s cheese), 250 grams
Eschallots, 4
2 cloves of garlic
800 grams of a mix of King Brown, chantarelle and field mushrooms (fresh or dried)
Thyme, 1 bunch
Radicchio, 1 head
Splash of white wine
If using dried mushrooms, place them in a bowl and add boiling water to let them steep for about 10 minutes or until softened. Squeeze liquid from mushrooms and put them aside, reserving some of the mushroom liquid for use later.
Melt about 100 grams of butter in a saucepan with a little olive oil, to prevent butter from burning. Finely chop the eschallots and add to pan, sweating them over medium-low heat until translucent. Add crushed garlic and slices of mushrooms to pan, making sure the mushrooms are well-coated in butter. Cook for about five minutes or until mushrooms darken and start to release some liquid. Add a splash of good quality white wine and cook off the alcohol.
Cook pasta in salted water until al dente. Drain and reserve some of the cooking water.
Pour in cream to pan of mushrooms and reduce heat to a very low simmer. Pull off leaves from two sprigs of thyme and add to sauce; allow flavours to stew for 10 minutes. If sauce looks too thick, add some mushroom liquid or water from the pasta to thin it out. Roughly chop two to three leaves of radicchio and add to sauce until just softened (about one minute). Transfer sauce to pasta and crumble goat’s cheese over the top.