Tristian’s recipe is an elegantly simple capunti with mushrooms and silverbeet. Capunti is a rustic, hand-formed pasta from Puglia that resembles the inside of a pea pod and is ideal for capturing rich and luxurious sauces.
200g Swiss brown mushrooms
150g Oyster mushrooms
100g king brown mushrooms
100g Australian snowflake mushrooms
4 garlic cloves
4 whole golden eschallots
1 bunch silverbeet
500g capunti pasta
1 bunch flat parsley
250ml fresh cream
100g parmesan
Salt and pepper to taste
Fill a large pot with water and put onto a high heat to bring to the boil.
While you are waiting for the water to boil, slice the mushrooms into bite size pieces.
Once all the mushrooms are cut, heat a large wide based frying pan, add a small amount of oil and once smoking add the mushrooms. You only want to add enough mushrooms to the pan to cover with 1 layer. Turn the heat down to medium and cook for 3-5 minutes stirring occasionally so all the mushrooms caramelise evenly until golden brown. Remove from the pan and set aside, repeat process until all mushrooms are cooked.
While the mushrooms are cooking, slice the garlic and eschallots thinly.
Once all mushrooms have been cooked, remove from pan – but do not discard the pan.
Place garlic and eschallots into the same pan which you cooked the mushrooms in, with a small amount of oil and caramelise them over a medium heat. Once caramelised (brown colour achieved) remove from the pan and set aside.
By now the water should be boiling, you can add the pasta to the pot stirring occasionally so they don’t stick together.
While the pasta is cooking, let’s go back to the sauce, add the mushrooms and onions back to the pan with the garlic and eschallots on a medium to high heat. Add the cream and bring to the boil. Ladel 200 ml of the pasta cooking water into the pan as well. Bring to the boil and reduce the sauce stirring occasionally.
Once your pasta is aldente, strain it and add the pasta to the sauce. You want to toss the pasta in the sauce to get an even coating, if the sauce is still runny just continue to reduce the sauce with the pasta in there until it coats the pasta nicely. Remove from the heat.
To finish the dish, remove the stalk from the silverbeet and the stalks from the parsley and slice them very thinly into strips, toss them in the pasta and the heat will cook them.
Finally season with salt, pepper and parmesan and serve in a Pebble Bowl Large.