Wine n’ About | Pasta Paccheri with a Red Wine and Sautéed Porcini Mushroom Sauce
Food n' Wine , Food Pairing
Pasta Paccheri with a Red Wine and Sautéed Porcini Mushroom Sauce

pasta-paccheri

*Serves 2 people

Ingredients
1. 1 Tbsp. of olive oil
2. A few cloves of garlic
3. 160 gm. fresh Porcini Mushroom (seasonal) …. otherwise 30 grams of dried Porcini Mushrooms.
*Although, if you have some nice fresh shitake mushrooms lying around,
we can also use that along with our dried Porcini! I don’t see why not ;o)
4. A fresh bunch of “Italian” parsley
5. A cup of red wine.
6. Salt and freshly grounded pepper
7. Grated Parmiggiano

Let’s get started!
1. Bring a large pot of salted water to a boil (Approximately 10gr. per liters of water)
*Tip: I love using rock sea salt – just a pinch of it

2. While we are waiting for the water to boil, heat the olive oil on a frying pan (the bigger the better) for few minutes on low heat then put the garlic in,  and stir-fried it till it turns golden brown. Once that is done, add the  mushrooms in to the frying pan and pour-in the glass of Destefanis Pimonte Barbera wine while bringing up the fire, then stir for 4-5 minutes  till the wine is reduced and continue to stir on gentle fire for another 4-5  minutes.
*Tip: Use good wine otherwise the sauce will become too acid or if you do
not have good wine, boil the one that you have available for 2-3 minutes
before using

3. By now, the water that we have prepared earlier should almost come to a  boil, put the Paccheri into the large pot of salted water.
*Tip: Different pasta size has different cooking time – so please do not
forget to read the instructions first (If the pasta is of an Italian brand, the
instructions will probably guide you to an al dente cooking time, if this
crunchier cooking time pasta result is that not to your liking, cook longer
or stick to the Asian noodles hahaha!!)

4. Finish the sauce by pouring 1/3 of the mushrooms into the blender and add a cup of water. Blend for 3 minutes at middle speed and put it aside; this will be our mushroom cream.

5. When draining the pasta please save 1 cup of cooking water. Put the paccheri in the frying pan with the sauce we previously made and add the mushroom cream, stir and mix everything together until creamy but not dry. If it’s too dry, add a little bit of the cooking water that we saved earlier or add cream (Not my ideal way but to each his own). If you decide to add cream, make sure to only warm the cream before but do not over cook it.

6. Put the finish product onto a plate and serve it IMMEDIATELY!
*Tip: The biggest mistake an amateur cook could make is not to serve the
food whilst hot. I cannot stress this enough: food must be served hot,
ALWAYS!