Wild Mushroom and Sausage Fettuccine

This is a favourite simple supper of mine.  You could leave out the sausages and/or throw in some crème fraiche and parsley if you like – it’s really a fairly flexible feast.  But I generally have a real thing for pasta, especially in the colder, wetter months.  When working late and I cannot be bothered to do a big cook, this is perfect.

This feeds two, but could easily be halved.

Ingredients:

200g mushrooms (see below)
2 sausages
2 cloves of garlic
50g butter
150-200g fettuccini (depending on how hungry you are)

I’ve used some speciality mushrooms here, just because Sainsbury’s had them in when I was shopping.  You can use anything really, but I recommend portabello if there’s nothing particularly exotic about.

It’s probably a good idea to get your pasta water on from the word go.  The dish doesn’t take long to make, and you want everything to be ready at once.

Start by prepping the mushrooms – you want them sliced / separated into ribbons.  How you do this will really turn on what mushrooms you’ve bought.

Next up, get a big frying pan on the heat and glug in a bit of olive oil.  Squeeze the sausage meet out of the sausages, discarding the skins, and fry the sausage meet in little chunks, breaking it up as it cooks.

You want to end up with slightly browned, crispy and fully cooked little chunks.

When done, remove from the pan using a slotted spoon and set aside, leaving as much of the rendered fat behind as possible.

You probably want to get the pasta in the pot now, so that’s ready when your mushrooms are.

Add half the butter to the pan and get your mushrooms cooking, so that they soften and begin to brown.  You may need to add a bit more oil, as mushrooms can really soak the fat up, but don’t overdo it.

When the mushrooms are soft, peel and crack the garlic cloves and add to the pan.  Don’t do this sooner or else the garlic will burn (as it cooks quicker than the mushrooms) and leave a nasty, bitter taste.  Add the rest of the butter with the garlic and reintroduce the sausages.

Cook for 5 minutes, but don’t let the mushrooms get too crispy.  Drain the pasta and throw it into the pan with the mushrooms and sausage mix.  Using tongs, mix the two together so that they are fully combined, then serve up, covered in grated parmesan.

Chicken of the Woods

Having taken a pretty epic holiday recently, Mrs Grubster and I were subjected to the unpleasant reality, arriving back in the UK, that autumn was definitely on its way.  It's colder than when we left, it's darker than when we left, it's even started getting foggy in the mornings and stuff.  Not cool, Britain, not cool. 

 

Anyway, cometh the season cometh the peculiar new wild foodstuffs that pop up in abundance every time the weather takes a dramatic lurch one way or another.  It's early September, so that probably means it's mushroom time.  We tramped off to Borough Market in search of mushrooms (puffballs to be precise) but were disappointed.  Instead we came away with Chicken of the Woods, a large bracket fungus that starts life like this…

 

 
…and goes on to look something like these examples, as it matures and the shelves (yes, that's actually what they're called) become larger and more bunched together.
 

 
You slice it up and pan fry it like steak – or, in fact, chicken breasts.  The end texture is very different to normal mushrooms – it's genuinely a little like overcooked chicken, quite dry and a little bitter.  To be frank, I'd want to do this again but with other mushrooms – the recipe I loved but I was not a particular fan of the chicken of the woods (or at least this mature version) although others, I should point out, were.

The fungus was sourced from the wonderful Turnips in Borough Market.  Borough Market, by the way, just enjoyed it’s 1,000th birthday.  One thousand years old.  That is mighty impressive – there can't be many food venues out there with that kind of longevity.
 

Anyway, back to the recipe...

Ingredients:

4-6 chicken of the woods steaks – or enough fungus for 4 people
2 garlic clove
2-3 shallots
1 bushy sprigs of thyme
50g butter
75ml dry sherry
100ml single cream (not used here, but it would have been an improvement)
Bread to serve (eg. ciabatta)

First, chop one garlic clove and shallot as finely as you can.  Fry these in a drizzle of olive oil in the pan together with the thyme (leaves picked from the stalk).  Once browned and softened, remove from the pan and set aside.

Add half the butter and fry one side of the fungus steaks on a gentle to medium heat for a few minutes, until brown and beginning to crisp a little.  Then flip them over and, spotting them with the remaining butter, cook the other side.  When about done reintroduce the shallots and garlic to come up to temperature.

Turn the heat up and pour in the sherry.  Allow it to fizzle away and reduce down to a thick syrup before adding a ladle of water and similarly cooking this off.  Taste the mushroom now to see if it's cooked – if it's still solid, add another half ladle of water and cook for a bit more.  (Note: If you are using different mushrooms, you may not need the water at all – taste one before taking that step.  If it's cooked, just move on.)

Whilst the liquids are cooking off slice the bread thinly and toast it.  When toasted, slice the remaining garlic clove down the middle and rib each slice with the open part of the clove.  A smear of butter won’t go amiss either as the mushroom mix may be pretty dry.

If you're using the cream, now's the time to add it.

Break the mushroom up into bit size chunks and pile it high up on the toast.  Serve and eat whilst still hot.

- GrubsterBoy -

Mushroom & Chorizo Risotto

Ever since I was a kid, on a cold, blustery night, I have always found a bowl of risotto a hearty, comforting meal.  There's something about its thick, rich flavours and textures that can always make me feel at home, safe and warm in doors. 

 

This is a recipe that a friend suggested years ago when we were all at university.  A bunch of us had rented a wee cottage up in the Highlands, in a beautiful little town called Portknockie and had spent the time wrapped up warm against the bitter December / January frosts.  I've played around with it a bit since then, but the basic premise – marrying the spicy, Moorish flavours of chorizo with the earthy goodness of mushrooms endures.

 

Ingredients:

 

½ to ¾ of a chorizo (get the real thing, the whole sausage, not sliced spicy salami)

250g chestnut mushrooms (button chestnuts work best)
25g dried mushrooms

1 white onion (I've used shallots only because they needed eating up – normally I'd use an onion)

2 garlic cloves
300g risotto rice
187ml white wine (that's a weird number but it’s conveniently – and by no means coincidentally – exactly one of those little, single serving bottles)
500ml chicken stock (or a bit more if you have it to hand)
50g salted butter
100g parmesan (plus a bit more to sprinkle on top, if that's your thing)

 

1. First, put your dried mushrooms into a jug and pour over plenty of boiling water – at least 300mls – to rehydrate them.  They need at least 10-15 minutes, so do this at the outset.

 

2. Now, chop the onions finely and the garlic very finely.  Slice the mushrooms.  Chop the chorizo into matchsticks, about a half centimetre across – you could also cube it, but I prefer matchsticks. 

 

3. Stick the chorizo in the largest frying pan you have.  It doesn’t need to have a lid.  You really, really don’t need to add any oil – I know this sounds unnatural, but very quickly the fat in the chorizo will melt out, and that's all the oil you're gonna need for this dish.

 

Once the chorizo is browned off, and lots of fat has been rendered out, remove it from the pan with a slotted spoon and put to one side. Resist the temptation to eat it as much as you possibly can. Leave behind all of the fat.

 

4. Soften, but don’t brown, the onions.  When they're almost there, add the garlic too.  The paprika from the sausage will give the whole pan a wonderful orangey hue.

 

 

5. Whilst the onions are softening, it's time to deal with your now somewhat less dry mushrooms.  Now, you want to preserve the liquor they've been in as far as humanly possible because it tastes phenomenal and we're going to use it to cook the risotto.  However, the problem you have is that dried mushrooms are covered in grit, so you want to separate that from the water (and, indeed, the 'shrooms).

 

So, first, strain the mushrooms using muslin or (in a pinch) a coffee filter paper.  I've even known people to put it through a cafetiere, but I'd be worried that (a) the mesh isn’t fine enough and (b) the mushrooms will end up tasting like coffee.  When the liquid has drained give the cloth a really good squeeze to get as much flavour out as possible. 

 

 

Next, stick the mushrooms in a sieve and give them a quick blast with water from the kettle.  You can lose this water – it's there simply to wash off any residual grit.  Put the mushrooms into the rinsed muslin / a new filter and give them another squeeze, this time preserving the water.

 

Once that's done, you should have some rehydrated dried mushrooms and a jug full of mushroom liquor.  Chop the mushrooms up medium finely.

 

 

6. Once the onions and garlic are soft, add the sliced fresh mushrooms and dried mushrooms to the pan and soften, but again try to avoid browning anything.

 

 

7. Reintroduce the chorizo to the pan, and introduce it to new friends mushrooms, garlic and onion (I actually forgot to do it at this stage, but it was far from critical).  Add the risotto rice and stir everything in, so that the rice is covered with fat.  Turn the heat all the way up for a minute or two.

 

 

8. Leaving the heat up at its highest, add the wine – all in one go.  Without stirring or even touching the rice, let the liquid cook off. 

 

9.  Now, the long, boring part.  Turn the heat down to about one-third.  Ladle by ladle (or slightly more if you like) add all of the mushroom liquor, stirring the whole mix up with each addition and cooking off each time.  At its most liquid, you should get tiny, simmering bubbles.  Once the mushroom liquor is used up, start adding the stock.  Taste it from time to time – it should take all the stock, and you may even need more / some boiling water from the kettle – but there's no harm keeping an eye on it all.  You want it just al dente. 

 

 

10. When the risotto is cooked and at your preferred level of bite, turn the heat off completely and add the butter and parmesan.  Season well with pepper, but remember that the saltiness of the stock and the parmesan will have added a lot of salt, so taste before seasoning.  Mix it all up so that the cheese and butter are fully melted and combined. 

 

 

Serve sprinkled more cheese if you like that kind of thing.

 

 

This makes a great dish for four hungry folk, or sits nicely in the fridge for a few days if you want to make something to eat through the week.

 

 - GrubsterBoy -