Roasted Mushroom Linguine
I am still at the mountain house, and laziness occupies most of my time. Taking siestas in the garden, reading and thinking... This being the case, cooking quick comfort food is essential for me.
I got some mixed mushrooms and fresh chillies from the village market. I have fresh herbs (thyme, rosemary, sage, basil) in the garden, a good mozzarella and a cut of pancetta in the fridge. And a packet of linguine staring at me in the kitchen... I didn't want to wash up a pile of dishes after cooking so I decided to make a roasted mushroom sauce for the linguine. Let me show you the result first! Comfort food at its best.
Now, this is how I made this quick (30-40 minutes including the cooking time) supper dish.
Serves 4
250 grams mixed mushrooms (any mushroom would do, but I used a mix of oyster, chestnut and shiitake)
5 cloves of garlic (squeezed)
3 branches of fresh rosemary (leaves roughly chopped)
1 handful of fresh thyme
1 fresh red chilli pepper (diced)
100 grams of pancetta
4 tablespoon olive oil
1 tablespoon butter
1 buffalo mozzarella
150 grams parmigiano
Freshly grounded black pepper
Sea salt
400 grams linguine
I roughly chopped the mushrooms, I wanted big chunks in the pasta. I finely diced the red chilli, minced the garlic cloves with the presser, cut the pancetta into thick pieces, chopped the rosemary and thyme. I put all of these ingredients into a big bowl, added salt and a good amount of black pepper. I finally added the olive oil and gave the bowl a good toss. I got my oven preheated at 200 Celsius. I put the mushroom mixture into a baking dish. This is how it looked like - already yummy!
I roasted the mushrooms for 15 minutes, took it out when most of the water evaporated but not totally dried out. I added the butter in and baked for 2 more minutes and took it out again. In the meantime, I boiled slightly salted water and cooked the linguine al dente. After draining, I put the linguine into the baking dish with the mushrooms. I added the chopped mozzarella and grated the parmigiano on top. I mixed it patiently, making sure that every bit of the sauce and mushroom touched the linguine. And this is how it looked like on the table! Enjoy.
