It’s like this. Pandemic. Stuck at home. You’ve built all of your keebs. You’ve rebuilt all of your keebs. Or maybe you haven’t built all of your keebs, or done your regular build logs for your buds on KeebTalk, because reasons (i’m still waiting for parts and materials for multiple builds, aaahhhh), but you’ve worked up an appetite. You’re hungry. What now?
Let’s cook! I’ll start.
Chanterelles in a sherry/cream sauce with linguini
Mise en place (i.e., get your stuff together)
- 4 tbsp butter, cut into 8 equal pieces
- 8 oz cream
- 1 lb mushrooms (chanterelles FTW, but really even good old button mushrooms work great, use whatever you like)
- 1 tbsp of sage, minced
- 1 large shallot, peeled and minced (dump into same bowl as prepped sage)
- 1/3 cup sherry
- bowl of freshly grated Parmigiano Reggiano
- 16oz linguine fini, fettuccine, or the pasta of your choice (or availability in your pantry, all I had was bucatini, so that’s what we’ll use here)
Put one of the butter pieces and 2oz of cream in a saucepan, get a pot of water going for the pasta, and get a skillet ready. If you’ve actually scored some good chanterelles, sweet…tear them up lengthwise. OK, you’re ready. Here’s what your prep should look like (you don’t need the olive oil, it photobombed me):
Put the skillet on medium heat, and put the rest of the butter in there. Your butter is ready when it’s starting to foam and bubble, like this:
Add the sage and shallots.
Let it cook for 3-4 minutes, until the shallots are becoming translucent, maybe even a little browned. When you get to that point, dump in the mushrooms. It will look silly, like a huge pile of shrooms in a small pan. That’s perfect.
Stir the shrooms around, pick up all that lovely butter, sage, shallot. Smell it. OMG.
Your mushrooms will absorb all that goodness. Let them cook for a few minutes, until you see them start to give up their liquid to the pan, anywhere from 5-10 minutes of cooking. When you see that happen, hit them with a little salt and a lot of fresh ground pepper…
…and then dump in the 6 oz of cream you held in reserve, along with the sherry. Mix everything together.
Now’s the time to start cooking your pasta in the boiling water.
After a few minutes, this is your situation - pasta is cooking, the mushroom cream sauce is turning a nice golden brown as it bubbles and cooks, and we’re waiting to do something with that butter and cream in the saucepot.
Go ahead and put the saucepot on low heat, just enough to melt the butter into the cream and swirl it together. While that’s happening, admire your mushroom cream sauce. Watch it bubble. Smell it again.
If you’ve gotten the timing right, at about the point the pasta is done, the mushroom cream sauce will have reduced to the point where you can drag a spatula through the skillet and see the trail. Depends on how long your stovetop takes to get a pot of water boiling. We use induction, so when I make this, if I start the water on high at the same time as I add the cream and sherry to the skillet, it works out. If you’re using gas or electric, start earlier than that.
At this point, dump the contents of the saucepot into the skillet.
Mix that together, and check your pasta - it’s probably ready. Drain it, run it under hot water for a moment, shake off the excess water, and put it in a warm serving bowl.
Dump the mushroom sauce over the pasta.
Use tongs to mix that all together until all of the pasta is lightly coated with the sauce.
Serve and sprinkle liberally with that grated cheese. Eat like the gods.
thanks !
