buttery morel mushroom truffle pasta

My pantry is full of secrets, most of them purchased at a wholesale specialty store called Surfas. Surfas has pretty much every unusual item you never knew you needed: jars of preserved lemons, tubes of chipotle and harissa, fancy dried beans in colors not normally applied to legumes, industrial-strength quarter sheet pans, tiny soy sauce dishes, French horseradish mustard, pasta shapes beyond imagination, butter made from Buffalo milk, and—the reason for the season—giant tubs of dried mushrooms, specifically morels, which came home with me only to be promptly abandoned on the shelf because I have absolutely no idea wtf to do with them.

Dried mushrooms seem almost illegal to work with. Fortunately, they’re easier to deal with than they look. Just dump some hot water on them and steep them like tea for 20 minutes and suddenly you’ve got both a pile of pliable, earthy shroom buddies to use, plus a bonus cup of mushroom broth to add even more shroom flavor. You’ll use both in this recipe.

Because dried mushrooms are shelf stable, you can find hyper-seasonal varieties that are otherwise fresh for too short of a time to be economically viable in a supermarket. Morels are one of my favorite mushrooms in this category, and reconstituted they have a pleasantly spongy kind of texture that makes a particularly nice contrast with flat, thin noodle strands. Here we have linguine—I wouldn’t use anything thicker, or the pasta mushroom ratio would be off—but feel free to experiment with any relatively delicate, quick-cooking shape.

Beyond reviving them from the dead, the mushrooms themselves don’t take much preparation. Morels are hollow, and slicing them thick creates little mushroom rings that look disturbingly like black olives if you squint. To cook them, just heat a little butter with a swirl of olive oil and lightly sauté them before building your sauce. You could in theory add garlic, and I promise you I thought about it, but there’s something nice to me about the elemental purity of mushrooms and butter—especially if you plan to add a little high quality truffle oil to the party at the end, which is exactly what I did and recommend you do too if you happen to have it.

Because dried mushrooms are a lot, the rest of the recipe is not: a little butter, a generous amount of pasta water, and a small amount of aged parm. No cream. No herbs. Maybe a little pepper. Toss together quickly, and that’s your show, plus or minus a little high quality truffle oil at the end, but definitely a hard plus if you’re asking my opinion on the subject.

Recipe

Dried morel mushrooms come back from the dead to reunite with tangles of linguine in a light, buttery, Parmesan truffle sauce that makes it seem as though they never left.

Effortful time: <10 minutes

Total time: 30 minutes

Serves 2

you need

  • 20-25 dried morel mushrooms

  • Warm water

  • 2 tbsp. butter, one for the mushrooms and one to toss with the pasta

  • 1 tbsp. olive oil

  • 8 oz. linguine

  • 1/4 cup finely grated parm

  • Salt and fresh black pepper, to taste

make it

  1. Revive the mushrooms. Count out your mushrooms. Feel free to add or subtract based on preference: unlike fresh mushrooms, dried morels don’t shrink or release a ton of water during the cooking process, so the visual volume of mushrooms you started with will be pretty much what you’ll end with. Put your whole dried morels in a heatproof glass or bowl and cover with warm water: I used water heated to about 180° in an electric kettle, but you can just as easily use hot water from the sink. Let these sit 20 minutes or until the mushrooms have expanded and the water is deep shroomy brown.

  2. Start boiling water for pasta while you wait. Salt it well, as usual.

  3. Prep the mushrooms. Remove the mushrooms from the water and pat dry—then dump that mushroom water right into your pasta water and keep on boiling it (stop pouring before you get to any grit in the bottom of the glass). Slice the mushrooms crosswise into little rings.

  4. Add pasta to the pasta pot and cook until fairly al dente (1 minute under the package minimum); you’ll finish it in the sauce.

  5. Cook the mushrooms. When your pasta has 3 minutes to go, heat a skillet over medium heat. Melt 1 tbsp. of butter and swirl in 1 tbsp. of olive oil. Add the mushroom pieces and sauté, stirring to coat fully, about 2 minutes or until soft and fragrant.

  6. Assemble the pasta. Using tongs, transfer the pasta directly from the water into the skillet with the buttery mushrooms. Toss in the grated parm and final tbsp. of butter. Keep over low heat and toss with tongs, adding splashes of pasta water to keep things loose as you go, until the pasta is fully tender, the sauce is glossy and emulsified, and little mushroom bites are distributed throughout the strands. Add a little more salt and pepper to your taste. Serve into bowls and toss with more parm and, if you like, a drizzle of your favorite truffle oil.

Bonus points: swap the second tbsp. of butter at step 6 for truffle butter. ~*

A @ italian enough2 Comments