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Passport & Plate - let's fall in love with creamy mushroom pasta

Australia | Thursday, March 13, 2014 | 5 photos

Ingredients
Pasta:
2 serves of penne paste (200g).

Sauce:
300g sliced white or brown mushrooms.
One very large brown onion (or 2 small ones), slice or dice.
200ml of fresh cream.
A bunch of fresh parsley, chopped roughly.
One long stem fresh rosemary.
3 cloves of garlic, finely chopped.

Extra virgin olive oil
Salt and black pepper to season.

 

How to prepare this recipe
Pasta:
2 serves of penne paste (200g).
Bring water to boil, add a teaspoon of salt in the water and reduce heat to medium, add pasta in the water, cook about 11 minutes or till it is al dente.
When it is ready, drain water.

Sauce:
Heat the pan and splash olive oil, generously.
Medium high heat, fry onion, before it starts to turn brown then add garlic in it, fry them till brown.
Add mushrooms to fry for a bit, then add in the rosemary, add salt to taste, fry for a bit. Before the mushroom starts to get soft, stir in all the cream in, leave it to simmer at low heat and stir occasionally. When the sauce starts to turn brown, add in all the parsley and keep stiring. Low heat leave the mixture to go simmering, stir occasionally, till the sauce turn brown and thicken.

Add pepper to taste.

Add sauce on to the pasta, garnish with some parsley and enjoy!

 

The story behind this recipe
My lovely Swiss Italian friend, Elio, introduced me to this dish. I love Italian food, but mostly tomato based dishes, but this creamy mushroom pasta wins my heart. It happened on our impromptus 3 weeks road trip in Western Australia last summer, we met some Italian in a campsite, he cooked creamy zucchini pasta and invited me to try. I loved it and couldn’t stop eating it. Elio said he would make me some creamy mushroom pasta that would be 10 times better. One of the nights, after a long drive, we parked the car at some rest stop between Coral bay and Cervantes, we decided to set camp there. There was some metal barrel with a metal plate to act as a stove which we could cook on. We bought most of the ingredients in the supermarket when we drove past a town. But the rosemary was hand picked freshly in a park, can’t believe there were rosemary everywhere, beautiful and fragrant. We collected some dried woods around the rest stop, he started to make a fire, I helped to prepare the cooking. He was concentrating in making the perfect creamy mushroom sauce. He told me the secret to make the food tasted is to toss it roughly, don’t lay it out too neatly.
It was getting dark, we could hardly see anything. Luckily I had my headlamp, so we cooked under the starlight, with a bit of the light from the fire and headlamp to illuminate our food. Unfortunately, the stove was too small, our pasta took more than half of hour to cook. We could only make the sauce first, then wait for the water to boil to cook the pasta, we were starving! But you know what, it was worth the wait, it was the best pasta I have ever tasted. Made with so much love. Cooking in the wild with wood fire help to make food taste so much better.
This has always been my fondest memory of food.
we eat rather poorly when we are on the road, but when there was chance of cooking, Elio always delicates his cooking skill to good food.
Whenever i miss him, I would make this pasta and share it with my dear friends.