Cascatelli with mushroom ragu

 April 27, 2024

   

Cindy's been a regular listener to The Sporkful for years now and followed along with Dan Pashman's quest to make the optimal pasta shape. This resulted in cascatelli, now widely available in the US. The full story of cascatelli's development and production are worth your time (see: here), it's a pretty fun project with an impressively successful outcome.

   

We had a food-loving pal going on holidays to the States, and Cindy convinced him to buy us a box of cascatelli so we could try it ourselves. We trusted Pashman to come up with the best recipes to show off his own shape, so once we had the precious box in our hands, we tackled this mushroom ragu recipe to try it out.

   

First, the pasta! I actually think Pashman has done a really good job with this shape - it's got a kind of sturdiness to it that I like and it really does hold the sauce very well. It's a ludicrous thing to have to ship it in from the US, but if it was available in our supermarkets I'd buy it pretty often. 

   

Even better than the pasta though was this mushroom ragu recipe - it's so impressive, rich and hearty and genuinely bursting with mushroom flavour. There's a reasonable amount of faffing around involved, but it's definitely one that will move into our long weekend slow cooking roster in future. Both the pasta and the sauce held up really well as leftovers too, I was really sad when we finally got through them all.

Cascatelli with mushroom ragu

(from this recipe by Dan Pashman from The Sporkful)

20g dried porcini mushrooms (20g)

2-3 tablespoons butter

2 tablespoons olive oil

~1.5kg mixed mushrooms (we used Swiss brown, oyster, king trumpet and portobello)

1 tablespoon tomato paste

2 tablespoons thyme leaves

1 teaspoon chilli flakes

1/2 cup white wine

1 cup mock chicken stock

1 box cascatelli (or equivalent pasta)

1/2 cup creme fraiche

1/2 cup grated pecorino

1/4 cup chopped parsley

2 large shallots, peeled and chopped

1 leek, sliced finely (white parts only)

3 cloves garlic, minced

Soak the dried porcinis in about 1 cup of hot water for about half an hour. Drain through a fine filter and reserve the broth. Chop the porcinis into bite sized pieces.

Melt some of the butter and olive oil in a large frying pan over medium-high heat and saute the mushrooms in batches for 3-4 minutes per batch, seasoned with salt and pepper - top up the butter and oil as necessary until you've got all the mushrooms fried up. Set aside the mushrooms along with their juices.

Add more butter and oil to the pan and then fry the leek and shallots over medium heat until they've softened, throw in the garlic for another couple of minutes. Stir in the tomato paste and cook for a couple of minutes and then stir through the thyme and chilli flakes. 

Stir in the mushrooms and the wine and cook for a while, until the wine has reduced by about one-third. Add in the stock and half the porcini water and simmer for about 5 minutes. Taste for seasoning and keep simmering if the mixture is still too watery. 

Meanwhile, cook the cascatelli (or alternative pasta) as per instructions, reserving some of the cooking water. 

Toss the cooked pasta with the mushroom mix and stir through the creme fraiche and half a cup of pasta water (or more if you need a more liquid-y sauce). Stir in the pecorino and most of the parsley and add more salt and pepper if required. Serve, topped with a bit of extra cheese and parsley.