Mushroom extravaganza ~ Ham Pie Sandwiches

20 June 2007

Mushroom extravaganza

What happens with the tiniest brown mushrooms are on special at the store?

OH I DON'T KNOW

MAYBE THIS

Super mushroom with pasta

lots of best mushrooms ever
olive oil/maybe butter if you want
garlic
dry vermouth
salt, pepper
pasta
parsley

First you get the best mushrooms ever from the store and gloat over them all day while you scheme about what to do with them. They are so tiny and delicious! figuratively as well as literally! My tiniest ones were maybe 3/4 of an inch across; the biggest were an inch, and had lovely skin that peeled upward in little scales. Clearly you can also use a more normal standard white mushroom, or any other kind that's around. Mushrooms! Use a whole bag of them.

Boil water and make pasta throughout the course of operations.

Rub the dirt off the mushrooms and cut off any particularly bad stem ends. If the mushrooms are too big for your satisfaction, cut them into halves or fourths.

Get out a sauté pan, add a bunch of olive oil, and warm it all up on medium-low. You can also add butter if you so desire. Crush, peel, and mince a bunch of cloves of garlic. I used maybe five; more would be good. Sauté the garlic gently until it softens and just barely begins to turn golden. Then add the mushrooms and stir to get the garlic-infused oil all over the place.

Let the mushrooms sit and cook in the oil for maybe five minutes before stirring. Then shake it all up and do it again, making sure to flip all the bits over appropriately. You may also want to add some more oil at this point, if things are dry. I used pretty abundant quantities of oil, considering.

When the mushrooms have clearly decreased in size and are starting to get golden and possibly a little crusty, add a big glug of dry vermouth and stir it all up. Cook for another five minutes or so to absorb all the liquid. Salt and pepper, and they are done.

Is the pasta done and drained? Dump it into the mushroom mixture and stir. Get the oil everywhere. Maybe add some more pepper if you find that the speckage has totally vanished. Then get the pasta out onto plates.

Deglaze the hot pan with another slug of olive oil. Just stick it over heat and scrape madly to get all the bits off the pan and into the vermouth. Pour this over the pasta. Add a bunch of torn parsley and you are done.

Eat it with a tomato salad.

Tomato salad

good tomato
salt

Cut up the tomato and sprinkle it with a little salt. Eat it.

2 comments:

Sarah R said...

That has to be the best mushroom pasta ever... now to get those awesome tiny guys at the store!

Dave said...

Hahahaha...MAYBE THIS indeed. I love it. Except the recipe for Tomato Salad is too complicated. =)