Sadly, Antonio Carluccio died unexpectedly at the end of 2017. He was a great character with an absolute passion for Italian food and Italian produce. One of my very favourite cooking shows is Two Greedy Italians. Its very amusing, thoughtful and at times, moving. Worth watching of you get the chance.
This recipe is a well balanced rather delicate pasta dish, with subtle flavours. It made a delightful light lunch. The mixture of fresh a dried mushrooms worked well. But - I have to confess I made one big error. I realised this when I started typing out the ingredients list - I forgot to add the milk! This would account for why I was puzzled to find there was very little sauce! An evaluation follows below.
Recipe Source: Antonio Carluccio's Italian Feasts
Ingredients
10g dried porcini
Freshly made pasta using:
100g strong white flour
1 egg
65g butter
1 small onion, finely chopped
300g mixed wild mushrooms
1 tbsp finely chopped flat leaved parsley
25g ground almonds
6 tbsp milk
Sea salt
Freshly ground black pepper.
Method
This recipe is a well balanced rather delicate pasta dish, with subtle flavours. It made a delightful light lunch. The mixture of fresh a dried mushrooms worked well. But - I have to confess I made one big error. I realised this when I started typing out the ingredients list - I forgot to add the milk! This would account for why I was puzzled to find there was very little sauce! An evaluation follows below.
Recipe Source: Antonio Carluccio's Italian Feasts
Ingredients
10g dried porcini
Freshly made pasta using:
100g strong white flour
1 egg
65g butter
1 small onion, finely chopped
300g mixed wild mushrooms
1 tbsp finely chopped flat leaved parsley
25g ground almonds
6 tbsp milk
Sea salt
Freshly ground black pepper.
Method
- Soak dried porcini in 150 ml water for 15 mins, then squeeze dry, reserving soaking liquor.
- Roll 8 flat sheets of pasta measuring 15 x 15 (6 x6in).
- Melt butter in a pan and fry the onion gently until soft, without colouring.
- Add the fresh mushrooms and soaked porcini yo the pan , stirring and fry for 2 mins.
- Stir in the soaking liquor, parsley, ground almonds, milk, salt and pepper.
- Simmer pasta in salted water until al dente.
- Drain and pat dry with kitchen paper. Place individual sheets on 4 warmed plates, spoon the mushrooms and their sauce on top on top (reserving a little for the final garnish.
- Cover with the remaining pasta sheets, folding the corner back, as if to prepare a bed for the night.
- Add a little of the sauce and serve.
- I halved the recipe as I was cooking for two. The main issues I had were:
- I found I had to add water to the pasta dough to make it pliable enough to knead and roll. Maybe the egg I used was too small?
- I was rolling pasta by hand and found that due to ragged edges I struggled to make enough pasta sheets from the quantity of pasta dough. I ended up making slightly smaller sheets.
- The ground almonds made the sauce ‘granular’. I’ve not used ground almonds to thicken sauces before. Normally, for a recipe like this I’d use cornflour. I wonder if the ground almonds found in Italy are much finer?
- I didn’t think there were enough fresh mushrooms to fill the pasta sheets. This is despite the fact I ended up using 300g fresh mushrooms for 2 portions which is more than listed. Perhaps the type of mushrooms I used shrank more than some would do?
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