So I'm going to show you how to make the most delicious creamy mushrooms. Really
gorgeous sumptuous silky, and this recipe is a principle recipe that you can take,
you can use time and time again, and you can use it for so many things. We've got a nice array of
mushrooms here: so we've got oysters, some lovely shiitakes, we've got lovely little chanterelles
here these are gorgeous, these are wild, and this is trompette de mort, the trumpet of death - but
you won't die don't worry. So we wash those if you wish, let's talk about flavouring.
I'm going to use thyme today, of course you could swap that out for any other woody herb.
I'm going to use dried chilli, just a little bit, and then of course
garlic. So, I said creamy mushrooms - what we have here is some crème fraîche, the idea is
we don't need this, right. We can make creamy mushrooms without cream, using butter and water
right, it's brilliant. So pan on, we're going to go medium-high heat, so we'll whack that up now.
I'm going to finely slice the garlic, just into little slices.
The chilli, I'll just take the end off the chilli just by slicing. Don't need much at
all. I do not want you to recognise like, any kind of hot-hot heat. Then we've got the thyme,
thyme is absolutely gorgeous and it's a nice savoury herb. Just a little teaspoon
of fresh thyme like that will make all the difference. So I love that. So, first little
thing I'm going to do which is quite interesting and really not traditional, I learnt this kind of
technique in Japan and they would - over barbecue, over coals - they would take humble mushrooms like
this and they would just kind of dry-grill them. And then I kind of changed that at home in the UK
to dry-frying them in a non-stick pan, so no oil right? So what this does interestingly is it
starts to bring out nutty flavours. Like I say you can go like whole mushrooms no trouble, you can
just break them in your hand like that, let's just slice a few up. This one is a king oyster, these
will all reduce in size as they cook. So give it a nice little shake, and if you toss it around
you'll start to see that it's catching and actually caramelising in its own natural
sugars right, you can see that in the oyster mushrooms, really nice. So now we're going to
start almost cooking in a more traditional way. So I'll make a little gap in the middle of the pan
like this, we're going to go in with a little drizzle of extra virgin olive oil,
we'll go in with a little knob of butter, we'll go straight in with the garlic.
And now we're going to go in with the chilli, and then the savoury fragrant notes of the thyme.
Now we can start to toss, and this is much more kind of traditional mushroom cooking. Season
nicely with salt and pepper. I'm going to serve these mushrooms with pasta,
tagliatelle, so I'll just put that into some boiling salted water. This will only take like
four or five minutes to cook. Now is the really interesting bit - we're going to take some of
this starchy water from this pasta and i'm going to put it into here. And that water
emulsifies with the fat and you get an emulsion, and that emulsion is the creaminess, a natural
creaminess without using cream okay, that's what we want. So give it a shake, look at that!
Can you see? There's the creaminess, it's there, that's there it's coming together now
that's the creaminess. And now we can turn the pan off and it's done. So at this stage in the
game the pasta is done. I'll also take some more water to mix with the creamy mushrooms,
and i'm just tossing that pasta in that creamy sauce, look at the colour!
What you can do if you wish, is just add a little parmesan. So let's plate up.
If you're a mushroom lover it's such a nice expression of mushrooms,
it really is. Little kiss of olive oil. And that is beautiful mushroom tagliatelle
with thyme, a tiny bit of chilli, and parmesan. Have we got the creaminess,
that's the question. What's lovely is the pasta really does soak up that gorgeous natural sauce.
Mm, the mushrooms are so savoury and rich, really hearty. Those mushrooms as they sat in the pan
untouched, so that could go on a steak, you could have it on polenta, on toast, you could
put it in a quiche, you could put it on a pizza, the list goes on... That's a really fundamental,
delicious, honest mushroom recipe. Great texture and it gives you loads and loads
of opportunity, so guys get cooking, get the mushrooms out and enjoy, take care.