Garlic Mushroom Pasta

On our trip to Spain, Per did most of the cooking, since I was feeling sick most of the time and generally was busy scratching all my itches. My favorite of what he made was this lovely simple pasta dish. The recipe was featured in the latest issue of Buffé, a free magazine that again proved to be better than I had thought. (Although I've changed it slightly, I don't really enjoy stock cubes in my food if they're not necessary. You can find the original here.) This pasta is something we couldn't wait to make again - so we made it a few days ago, too. This time, we used chanterelle mushrooms. Honestly, I can't say that it makes a huge difference in this dish. Use whatever you've got, and remember that ordinary button mushrooms will be perfectly ok. As for the cream, use whatever fat-content that you're comfortable with. We used a 20%-fat the first time, and that was delicious. Back home, we cut back to a much slimmer one - and sorry, but it wasn't quite as good. Not very surprising, perhaps.



Garlic Mushroom Pasta
serves 4

300 g whole wheat pasta
1 large yellow onion, sliced
140 g diced bacon
300 g mushrooms, cleaned and cut into pieces
2-3 cloves of garlic
pepper
250 ml cream
handful of shredded parmesan

Cook the pasta according to the instructions on the packet. Meanwhile, fry the bacon. When it starts rendering fat, add the onion, and fry gently. Add the mushrooms. Mince the garlic, and add that, too. Season with pepper - and salt if you need it. Add the cream, bring to a boil and let simmer until the pasta is done. Drain the pasta, reserve some of the water, pour the sauce over the pasta and toss. Add a little bit of water if you need to loosen it up. Add the parmesan. The magazine also suggests tossing in a handful of fresh herbs, or maybe some fresh spinach - I'm sure both would be lovely, but I haven't gotten around to trying it.