campanelle alla boscaiola

So here is my second attempt at the boscaiola pasta. First of, it tasted much better this time ;-)

Few things I did differently:
1) In addition to the porcini, I also used half a cup of each white and maitake mushrooms;
2) I used three fresh roma tomatoes plus three table spoons of Muir Glen's Portobello Mushroom pasta sauce;
3) Campanelle was used instead of fenne or cavatappi (which I have yet to find in Davis!).

In regards to the first two points here are my two cents:
1) Addition of fresh mushrooms really adds flavour. There is not doubt that porcini is extremely aromatic, but its taste is less conspicuous by comparison. I think this is mainly because the fragrance is so powerful that one naturally expected something of an equal par on the palate. The maitake definitely hits the right note. On top of the nutty taste, the meaty texture of this mushroom also help to improve this dish nicely.
2) I do not mean to sound like a snob, but I am generally adversed to premade pasta sauces. This is mainly because I believe one can easily make simple sauces at home that can taste as good or, more likely, much better than prepackaged ones. The key is to always have the right ingredients on hand. And that was my problem: I had hoped three roma tomatoes would have been juicy enough but they weren't and I didn't have extra tomatoes and I had ran out of tomato pasta (pure ones with nothing added). Instead there was a bottle of MG's pasta sauce in the fridge (we won't dwell on how it got there). Three table-spoons was enough with about 1/4 cup of water to dilute it then simmered down.

Like I said, it turned out great!

I haven't mentioned wines in past posts, but I thought I should start. We paired this dish with a 2005 Cline Cashmere. It is a decent wine with lots of berries and a very subtle finishing which together made it a good pair with the pasta.

Strozzapreti ai Porcini e Peperoni

My first endeavor was decided upon by Aaron's (my bf) love of mushrooms, and on this particular day, it was porcinis. There are only three recipes in the book using porcini, and we settled on the one on page 128. I particularly like this recipe because it was really flavorful and because the ingredients list was relatively short (always a plus for me-- a strong believer in simplicity).

Although we could not find any fresh porcinis at the farmers' market we were happy to get some dried ones from the shops. I soaked the mushrooms in quite a bit of water to rehydrate them; this concerned me a little as the recipe asked to cooked the mushrooms with the water it was soaked in (after filtering) until the water completely evaporates. For a while, I was sure the water would never dissipate! But, at last, it did, and the mushrooms did not get over-cooked (probably not possible to overcook porcinis..?).

The treatment of the herbs was a novelty for me. Three herbs were called for: garlic, sage, and rosemary. Aside from slightly crushing the garlic, all should be intact (I should have read the instruction beforehand =P). The idea is to cook the herbs in olive oil until the garlic browns then discard the herbs, leaving the oil with a lovely aroma of infused garlic, sage, and rosemary, to which the porcinis were added. The fragrance remained in my kitchen for a good long time-- it was mouthwatering.

Another novelty from this recipe, for me, was the peeling of the capsicums (that's bell pepper for you yanks). I don't know about others but I have never peeled my capsicums before (the skin will generally come off it I bake/roast them). So, for fellow newbies out there, I would recommend purchasing ones with few ridges and peeling them before coring & de-seeding.

A final comment about the making of this dish is on the amount of seasoning. This dish is really aromatic and flavourful, so I would recommend using the salt and pepper sparingly.

All in all, I think my first endeavour was very successful. So successful that Aaron ordered an 8oz bottle of dried porcini from the internet! I guess we'll be coming back to this dish =)
They arrived a week later ::