Saturday, March 5, 2011

Mushroom Ragu

I had a great lesson today and Brett video taped most of it.  Once I've had a chance to play with the video I'll post about that but, in the meantime, here's dinner from last night...




I always start by assembling all the ingredients and then doing any prep work.  That way, I don't leave anything out or have to go running for something I forgot half way through the process.  

I started by prepping the mushrooms.  The two large portobellas had the stems and gills removed (easy to do with a spoon).  Then I chopped them into 1/2 inch pieces.


The dried mushrooms were soaked in hot chicken stock for ten minutes.  The I fished out the mushrooms with a fork and chopped them up fine.  I poured the liquid through a sieve lined with a coffee filter to remove the residue.











I put my favorite pan on the stove and began by browning pancetta until it was crisp and the fat was rendered.


Then I added all the goodies: mushrooms, tomato paste, rosemary, garlic and olive oil.  


I let is cook until the mushrooms were brown.


Last, I added in the reserved mushroom soaking broth and some tomatoes.  I let it simmer about 20 minutes.












Meanwhile I pulled the foccaccia  (sprinkled with sel gris and rosemary) from the oven and put it on a rack to cool.  We pretty much ate the whole loaf -- bad, bad, bad.



...and tossed our salad.  Greens and beets from the garden.  


When the ragu was done I tossed it with whole wheat spaghetti and poured us each a glass of red Tuscan wine.



Bon appetit !

4 comments:

  1. little cooking question: why did you remove the stem totaly and the gills???

    I always cutt the last end of the stem but that's it...

    Thanks
    Leontien

    ReplyDelete
  2. There wasn't much of a stem and it was pretty woody so that is why I removed it. The gills won't hurt anything but they make the sauce kind of muddy looking. On smaller mushrooms I leave the gills and just trim the end of the stem. These were big ol' plate size mushrooms.

    ReplyDelete
  3. Oh, that looks so good! I LOVE mushrooms. I need to put this in my recipe book to try later!!

    ReplyDelete

Thanks so much for commenting!