Recently I went looking for a recipe for us that was relatively easy, warm, and could be reheated. Unfortunately at the time, I didn’t have the lists of potential recipes that I’d identified for the year. So, I went to my new favorite site – SeriousEats.
I stumbled onto the following recipe – a little more work than I’d intended, but oh, so tasty:
Crispy Baked Pasta with Mushrooms, Sausage, and Parmesan Cream Sauce
Ingredients
- 1 c Panko-style bread crumbs
- 6 oz grated Parmesan cheese
- 1/4 c chopped fresh parsley leaves (I hate parsley. It gets removed from my recipes more often than not)
- 2 Tbsp finely minced fresh chives
- 2 small shallots, finely minced (about 1/2 c)
- 2 medium cloves garlic, minced
- 2 Tbsp extra-virgin olive oil
- Kosher salt
- Ground black pepper
- 2 Tbsp unsalted butter
- 8 oz Italian sausage (mild or hot), removed from casings (Went straight for the bulk Italian sausage at my grocery store, instead of the links in casings.)
- 1 lb mixed mushrooms, such as portobello, shiitake, and oyster, cleaned and thinly sliced (Next time, I’m sticking only with baby portobellos)
- 1 Tbsp soy sauce
- 1 Tbsp lemon juice
- 2 1/2 Tbsp all-purpose flour
- 2 c low sodium chicken stock
- 1 c heavy cream
- 8 oz dried ridged pasta such as rotini or campanelle
Directions
- Bring a large pot of salted water to a boil and keep at a bare simmer. Combine bread crumbs, 2 ounces of cheese, half of the parsley, (again, got rid of the nasty green stuff.), half of the chives, 1/4 of the shallots, 1/4 of the garlic, and all of the olive oil in a medium bowl and massage with hands until combined. Season to taste with salt and pepper.
- Melt butter in a large cast iron skillet over medium-high heat until foaming. Add sausage and cook, mashing it with a potato masher or a wooden spoon until broken up and well browned, about 7 minutes. Use a slotted spoon to transfer the sausage to a small bowl, leaving the fat behind.
- Increase heat to high, add mushrooms to the skillet, and cook, stirring frequently, until moisture has evaporated and mushrooms are well browned. (I may have shortened this time too much when I tried it. The mushrooms looked good in about 5 minutes.) Add shallots and garlic and cook, stirring until fragrant, about 30 seconds. Add soy sauce and lemon juice and stir to combine.
- Add flour and cook, stirring, until a thin film begins to form on the bottom of the pan, about 1 minute. Slowly whisk in chicken broth, followed by heavy cream. Bring to a simmer and cook until thickened, about 2 minutes. Stir in remaining grated cheese until melted. Stir in remaining parsley (nope) , and chives. Stir in sausage. Season to taste with salt and lots of black pepper.
- Adjust rack to 10 inches below the broiler elements and breheat the broiler to high. Cook pasta in salted water according to package directions, removing it when still just shy of al dente. Drain, reserving 1 c of cooking liquid. Return to pot. Add mushroom mixture and stir to combine, adding liquid to adjust consistency. Pasta should be very loose, but not soupy. (While it might be easier to do the combining in the pot that originally held the pasta, I skipped that part. After draining, the pasta went straight into the skillet with the sausage mixture (heat off), and I carefully combined it there. I didn’t need the extra liquid, but it was nice to have it there, just in case.)
- Top the mixture in the skillet with the bread crumbs mixture. Broil until golden brown, rotating the pan as necessary, 2 to 3 minutes. Serve immediately.
All in all, a very successful new recipe for me! I was almost scared off by the use of a cast iron skillet, but since I’d been skipping recipes that use them for the longest time, I felt it was time to stop being afraid and just go for it.
This recipe was the impetus for learning how to season a skillet, and how it’s okay to use soap to clean it, as long as you’re not scratching the seasoning (and that there are ways to fix it if you do). Not nearly as scary as I thought it would be, and again, I have Serious Eats to thank for that one.
I definitely wouldn’t consider this particular recipe “quick”, either. There was more prep time on my end, for sure – I used a block of Parmesan, and grated it by hand! And let me tell you, that took me a while. Also, the oyster mushrooms required slicing. So, to make it a bit faster next time, I’m going to go with only portobello mushrooms that I slice, and I’ll consider getting pre-grated cheese.
Then again, there was something soothing about spending the time concentrating on making sure I didn’t grate myself with my zester…
In any case, it smelled really good, tasted fantastic, and was warm and comforting. From a reheating standpoint, it does well, but DH, who’s not as big a fan of mushrooms as me, claims the mushroom taste is enhanced by the microwave.
I’ll be trying it again!