A few weeks ago, while I was looking for food related documentaries or programs on Youtube to spend some time, I found “Food Safari Italy” by Australian TV network SBS. It is actually a series of programs that consist of several seasons, called “Food Safari” and in most of the episodes, they visit another cuisine. For Italian and French cuisines though, they made several episodes. Watching the Italian episodes make you drool so much that if you watch it in the middle of the night, you can’t sleep for long hours because of feeling hungry!

 

 

I don’t eat pasta much anymore and I am generally reluctant to give pasta recipes because I don’t know if I can really make recipes that are worthy of a good pasta dish. However, this dish is one I saw in that Food Safari Italy episodes and I believe it cannot be wrong because it was given by a very good Italian chef!

 

The original recipe calls for porcini mushrooms and taglierini pasta (a thinner version of tagliatelle). I used a variety of mushrooms that included oyster mushrooms, porcini and funnel chanterelle since there isn’t fresh porcini mushrooms and I used angel hair pasta. But I will definitely make that again when it is porcini mushroom (herkkutatti in Finnish) season.

 

 

 

I also suspect that this dish would go great with dried porcini mushrooms by Kaavi Porcini! Last year around this time I designed some recipes for Kaavi Porcini mushrooms which you can find here and I loved their products!!

 

This program made me enthusiastic about Italian cuisine and a mini visit to Italy – I might do that visit very soon! Enjoy your recipe!
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Ingredients:

Difficulty: ★☆☆ (Easy)
(serves 4)

 

Printable PDF-recipe (no photos)

 

300 gr. angel hair pasta
1 dl. olive oil
250 gr. mushrooms (could be a collection of different kinds like I did, or porcini mushrooms if you can find)
2 garlic cloves, chopped finely
salt and pepper to taste
2 tbsp parsley, chopped finely

 

To serve (optional):
Drizzle of olive oil
chopped parsley

 

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1. Boil a pot of water for the pasta. Angel hair pasta cooks just in 3 minutes so you can first boil the water while cooking the mushrooms (if you are using another kind of pasta, please check cooking instructions on the package). For the water I partially used vegetable broth – I had just a little bit homemade vegetable broth left and I thought using it would add a great taste, however you can use plain water.

 

2. In a medium pan, put olive oil and heat for a minute on medium heat. Add mushrooms and stirring occasionally, cook until slightly browned.

 

 

 

 

3. Add garlic, salt and pepper and continue cooking by stirring.

 

 

 

 

 

4. In the meantime, if your water is boiling, cook the pasta and drain in cold water. IMPORTANT: keep some of the water you used for cooking pasta.

 

5. When garlic is cooked too and gets browned, add parsley, stir just a little.

 

 

6. Add cooked pasta and about 1-2 dl of pasta water. Stir a little to mix pasta and mushroom mixture and take out of the heat. Divide between the plates and drizzle with olive oil to serve, and add some chopped parsley on top (optional). Enjoy!