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Engaging stories of love, joy, comfort and friendship with proven scrumptious, healthy recipes, we celebrate LOVE as the secret ingredient for wonderful food!

Pasta with Shiitake Mushrooms & Peas in a Light Cream Sauce

June 11, 2020 by Mary 4 Comments

Finished Pasta with Shiitake Mushrooms & Peas in a Light Cream Sauce in a white bowl, photographed outside.
This Pasta with Shiitake Mushrooms & Peas in a Light Cream Sauce is a quick and easy dish – perfect for an al fresco lunch or dinner.

When I lived in Italy, I would make this dish with fresh Porcini mushrooms, which are literally To. Die. For. I have never seen fresh ones here and the dried ones, when you reconstitute them are NOTHING like the fresh. So, I had a hankering for this dish this week, while my 29-month old grandson was staying with me for the week. Because fresh Porcini are not available, I made this Pasta with Shiitake Mushrooms & Peas in a Light Cream Sauce with some beautiful fresh Shiitake mushrooms I had just bought the day before. While my grandson loved the dish, me, not so much at the time.

I honestly thought this recipe of Pasta with Shiitake Mushrooms & Peas in a Light Cream Sauce was not good enough to share with you. You know, my recipes have to be superlative and mostly easy and healthy in order to share with you. Those are my requirements.

It made the grade!

Then I took the leftovers back to my son, when returning my adorable, smart, entertaining and beautiful grandson. (I just had to get that in there as my son won’t let me mention his name or show his picture on social media – so there you go – I am reduced to adjectives.) My son had some of the leftovers and said, “Mom, that dish was really, really good!! The mushrooms were meaty (Porcini are really meaty – in fact, just like meat!) and I don’t know why you didn’t like it. Do you have Coronavirus? You know it affects your taste buds.”

Well of course I do not have the Coronavirus and meaty was what I was looking for in the mushrooms but I guess it’s all relative. I knew what you could get with Porcini and these didn’t live up to it in my book but hey, my son (the oldest – you knew) is a pretty harsh critic and if he says it was delicious, even as a warmed up leftover, you can bet this is delicious.

Porcini in Arezzo

Along with the memory of making this dish in Italy, is the actual buying of the Porcini at the market in Arezzo on Saturday mornings. Oh how I loved that market! Everything was so fresh and beautiful and amazing. I would meet my friend Cristina and immediately go to this one Porchetta stand and get a warm Porchetta sandwich to eat at 10 am in the morning. I did not care about the garlic at that hour. The sandwich was heaven. Cristina thought I was crazy.

But I digress. The Porcini man was this big burly guy who would shout out Porcini, Porcini, Porcini and I would come to buy and pick several, (you have to buy whatever you touch – way before Coronavirus), and then he would weigh them and charge me and then always put a few extra in my bag, a little gruffly. But you could tell, he was a teddy bear deep down inside with his bearish voice and rough hands.

An Americana in Italy…

True, I was the token Americana in this small town.

I once asked my friend Tizianna, “So, do I really stand out? Do I not look Italian?”

“No Mary, you do not look Italian,” replied Tizianna.

I was disappointed. I thought I blended in more.

But no. This (supposedly) 100% Polish girl did not look Italian.

So now, I feel compelled to share this recipe with you and I hope you love it and I hope that someday, you’ll also get to make it with fresh Porcini mushrooms.

Obviously, this is a vegetarian dish and the idea was to make a dish tasting meaty enough without it having meat, as I think it would be healthier for all of us and the planet, if we cut down on our meat consumption.

So please give it a go, and don’t forget to add LOVE when making it. It’s quick and easy and really very delicious.

Sliced Shiitake mushroom caps, minced mushroom stems and thinly sliced shallot before mincing.
Sliced Shiitake mushroom caps, minced mushroom stems and thinly sliced shallot.

PASTA WITH SHIITAKE MUSHROOMS & PEAS IN A LIGHT CREAM SAUCE – serves 4

½ lb. pasta, such as strozzapreti, conchiglie, or small ziti
8 large Shiitake mushrooms, wiped clean with a damp paper towel, stems trimmed of dirt, removed from caps & finely minced; caps sliced into 4 or 5 slices each
1 shallot, thinly sliced with a hand mandoline
2 Tbs. butter
1 Tbs. extra virgin olive oil (EVOO)
2 cups frozen baby peas
½ cup finely grated Parmigiano Reggiano cheese
¼ cup of heavy cream, divided
½ cup pasta water

Shiitake mushrooms caps, minced stems and shallots sauteing in a skillet.
Minced Shiitake stems and shallots pushed off to the side, while browning the sliced caps.

The process

Bring a large pot of water to boil. After it boils, add a generous tablespoon of coarse sea salt, or enough so that it tastes like the ocean. Bring to a rolling boil again, then add your pasta and cook for 2 minutes less than the lesser amount on the package. Drain the pasta reserving 1 cup of pasta water.

Put the frozen peas in a strainer and run cold water over them. Gently break up any frozen clumps. Let them continue to drain while you work on the rest of the dish.

Heat the EVOO with the butter and sauté the sliced shallots and mushroom stems on medium-high heat. After the butter subsides, move the minced shallots and stems to the sides of the skillet and add the mushroom cap slices, spreading them out evenly in the pan. Lower the heat to medium and do not touch them for 5 minutes. Then flip them over to brown the other side and cook until tender and lightly browned, about 3 more minutes.

Add 2 Tbs. heavy cream. Add the cooked pasta, the Parmigiano, and ½ cup of the pasta water. Stir thoroughly. Add the drained peas, stirring and finish cooking the pasta until al dente. If you need more pasta water, add it. This will take 1 – 3 minutes, depending on how your pasta was cooked in the beginning.

Finish with heavy cream and LOVE

Finish the dish with the 2 more Tbs, of heavy cream stirred in. Add fresh ground pepper and taste for salt – it probably will not need salt if you salted your pasta water properly and the Parmigiano Reggiano is also salty. Stir to combine completely. Add your LOVE.

Serve in warmed bowls and enjoy!!

Finished Pasta with Shiitake Mushrooms & Peas in a Light Cream Sauce in the skillet.
Finished Pasta with Shiitake Mushrooms & Peas in a Light Cream Sauce, ready to serve!

Filed Under: Dinner, Lunch, Pasta Tagged With: Dinner, lunch, meatless dinners, pasta, peas, quick meatless meals, shiitake mushrooms, vegetarian pasta

March newsletter coming out!

March 28, 2013 by Mary Frances 8 Comments

Just in time for Easter! Sign up for the March newsletter in the upper right hand corner of this blog for a fantastic, never before seen (here) recipe for roasted duck and some other suggestions for your holiday meal.

And just to brighten up this post, I’d like to share with you my lunch salad from yesterday. It’s some frisee with red leaf lettuce topped with tomatoes, tomatillos, radishes and a half of a leftover pork chop with some toasted pepito seeds on top. Red wine vinaigrette finishes it off and voila! This is a healthy, satisfying lunch that carries you through to dinner!Frisee lunch salad with pork chop, tomatillos, tomatoes, radishes, and toasted pepito seeds.

Filed Under: Lunch Tagged With: frisee, lunch, newsletter, pepito, radishes, red wine vinaigrette, roast duck, salad, tomatillos

Dining out

May 19, 2012 by Mary Frances 2 Comments

Caviar Russe gravlox with caviar on a white plate.
I had a terrific lunch with my friend Judy this past week. She took me to Caviar Russe. It was divine! Judy is in the investment banking business and likes to take clients there. It is on the second floor overlooking Madison Avenue and she said she likes to come particularly in the winter when it’s snowing. To look out of that second floor window with the snow falling, is just so pretty. The seating is dark chocolate colored suede banquettes with beautiful china and exquisite service. They know Judy there so I’m certain we got special treatment.

This food is certainly not what I could make or serve at home. It was precious, beautiful, delicious and unusual, and my boys would have gone home hungry. Just take a look at the appetizer on the lunch tasting menu we had. Gravlox with Russian Caviar, creme fraiche, dill, lemon zest, little bits of crisp brown bread chips and flowers. (the flowers were probably from the mountains of Switzerland?) The delicate fish sat on a small pool of creme fraiche as well and having white ribbons of creme fraiche adorn it. I don’t know how they made those. Perhaps rapid freeze a thin slab of creme and then cut it into ribbons? Anyway, it was so pretty, I had to be one of those gawkers who actually took a picture at the table. I wanted to share it with you! (Sorry the pictures are a bit blurry – I had to take them quickly with my iPhone.)
Caviar Russe chocolate ganache on a beautiful plate.

For dessert, which isn’t normally served with this meal, our waiter brought out this lovely serving of chocolate ganache with whipped creme and some sort of crunchy toffee like topping. This was served with the traditional ivory caviar spoon – and with that beautiful plate, it was almost too pretty to eat. But not enough. And it was delicious! Thank you Judy and Caviar Russe!

Filed Under: Lunch Tagged With: brown bread crisps, Caviar Russe, chocolate ganache, creme fraiche, dill, gravlox, iPhone, lemon zest, lunch, Russian caviar, whipped cream

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Mary Frances

Mary Frances

Spread love through cooking.

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