Last night, we prepared a very easy egg noodle and mushroom dish. Originally called Fettuccine with Mushrooms, Marsala and Mascarpone we were able to mix this dish together with a few different ingredients, that made it a dinner hit.
Every time we go to Jeff's office, we drive past a local Barnes & Noble Book Store. Jeff always laughs because in the year and a half he has been working in Braintree (MA), he has only been in there twice. Jeff is a dedicated reader and huge book fanatic, as our 4+ bookcases will prove, so it is funny that he is not there more often. Then again, downloading e-books is now more common than buying a book.
We decided to stop in and wander. That is the beauty of a good book store...the ability to kill quite a bit of time just "looking". Of course, I head over to the cookbooks and Jeff looks at all the new releases, until I hear, "Come here for a minute." I stroll over and we proceed to thumb through a cookbook called Nigellissima from Nigella Lawson. (It has a great app for those with Apple devices) All we need to see is a few delicious recipes when the conversation turns to "Should we buy it? We have so many cookbooks. What's one more?"
Exactly, what's one more cookbook? To add to the many we have and use. One recipe that seemed interesting was a Fettuccine with Mushrooms, Marsala and Mascarpone. This would be an easy recipe for one of our crazy nights, defined by whoever gets home before 6 PM. We went to the market to get our ingredients, when we hit our first dilemma, they were out of dried Porcini mushrooms. We decided to go with dried Shiitake mushrooms instead. We also looked at the fettuccine and decided we wanted a bigger pasta noodle so we grabbed a bag of wide egg noodles.
I was the "chopper" so I was in charge of the garlic, parsley and mushrooms. While I was chopping the mushrooms, I was on the phone with my son, Michael. I wasn't paying attention and finely chopped the mushrooms. I thought it looked ok, Jeff was looking for a few larger mushroom pieces.
The dish was absolutely delicious. It had a smooth creamy flavor that wasn't heavy. The marsala wine with the mushrooms gave it an earthy flavor. I loved the wide noodles because they were easier to get on a fork and into my mouth. As much as I didn't want to eat seconds, I did grab a few additional noodles from the pan. Jeff loved this dish, though he would have liked to have seen larger mushroom pieces.
If you are looking for an easy dinner recipe or a wonderful side dish to complement a chicken or beef dish, this is perfect...now, pass me another dish of Egg Noodles with Mushrooms, Marsala and Mascarpone Cheese.
Wide Egg Noodles with Shiitake Mushrooms, Marsala and Mascarpone Cheese
Adapted from Nigella Lawson
Ingredients:
1 package (about 1 cup) of dried Shiitake mushrooms
1/2 cup of Marsala wine
1/2 cup of water
1 cup of Mascarpone cheese (8 ounces)
1/4 cup of parsley, finely chopped
1 - 16 ounce bag of egg noodles
2 tablespoons of butter
2 cloves of garlic, minced
1/2 - 3/4 cup of grated Parmesan cheese
freshly grated nutmeg
ground pepper and kosher salt
Preparation:
1. Place Shiitake mushrooms, Marsala wine and water in a small saucepan over medium heat. Allow mixture to boil, then remove from heat and let it sit for 10 minutes.
2. Start boiling the water for the pasta, salt the water. Cook pasta according to directions. Save 1 cup of the liquid before draining.
3. Strain the mushrooms and save the liquid in a medium bowl. Finely chop half the mushrooms and loosely chop the remainder.
4. In the bowl with the mushroom liquid, add the Mascarpone cheese, 2-3 good grates of nutmeg (or 2 pinches of ground nutmeg) and 1/2 teaspoon of black pepper. Mix until well incorporated.
5. In a large saute pan over medium heat, melt the butter and then add the minced garlic and stir for 30 seconds. Add the Shiitake mushrooms and parsley and saute for 2-3 minutes so all ingredients are blended.
6. Add the cheese mixture and cook until it begins to bubble. Remove from heat.
7. Add the noodles and toss to coat. Add the Parmesan cheese and if the mixture is too thick, add some of the reserved pasta liquid. We used about 1/2 cup.
Feeds 4 hungry people!
Written by Tricia White
