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.
