This Creamy Mushroom Pasta with Fried Halloumi and Pistachio Dust is an undeniably flavorful, cozy pasta recipe that is perfect for a meatless Monday (or meatless any day, let’s be real). However, this one is equally as lovely when served alongside a hearty protein. I like to use (rehydrated) dried porcini mushrooms, to turbo-boost that mushroom flavor, but you can play around with how you do that. (We’ll talk more about this in a sec). Instead of dried porcini, which can be a little pricy, you could try a natural (not synthetic) truffle oil, drizzled over the dish just after plating. OR, you can “forage” for a black truffle paste/puree in the gourmet foods or Italian section of your supermarket or specialty foods store. Incidentally, I have tried all of the above – both separately and all at once – and I find that you simply can’t go wrong. It’s all bout ramping up that mushroom flavor, and there is more than one way to skin that cat.
Kitchen Little Trick: How (and why) to use Dried Porcini Mushrooms
One of my favorite ways to explore the flavor potential of an ingredient is to double down on it – use it in either various forms or, particularly with produce, use different varieties of that ingredient. We saw that trick with the Apple Slump with Vanilla-Cayenne Caramel from a couple weeks back. By simply using different types of apples, we really achieve a truly rich depth of apple flavor throughout the dish. Today, we’re singing the same song, but set to a decidedly fungal tune. (Okay, that sounds odd, but trust me – this recipe is to die for …).
Essentially, I am just giving you some ways to amplify the flavor of pre-sliced (highly convenient) inexpensive mushrooms, and you can sort of choose your own adventure here. This is today’s My Kitchen Little trick, and it will help us maximize the power of our minimal ingredient list. Mushrooms are today’s star – and we’re going to use them in two ways to build a very complex tasting (yet massively easy and fast) sauce to coat our pasta. To go along with the sliced baby bellas (I buy the pre-sliced mushrooms, as I appreciate their time-saving ability, but you can buy the whole ones and simply clean and slice them yourself), we’ll rehydrate a small package of dried porcini mushrooms, chop them up very fine, and then stir that into the sauce with the bellas and some tangy, bright goat cheese. As we so often do, we’ll use the starchy cooking water from the pasta to help bring our sauce together. Another Kitchen Little trick …
Doubling down on the mushroom component of the recipe really accomplishes that goal, and gives a deeper, almost umami quality to this dish. All that said, please know that you can totally skip it – just jump right over it – and simply stick to those beefy, meaty sliced baby bellas and call it good. Those, combined with the luscious, piquant tang of the goat cheese, will work in tandem to create the simplest, most satisfying vegetarian pasta.
The skinny on truffle oil
Truffle oil gets a bad wrap in the world o’ professional cooking, with everyone from food writers to famously, Anthony Bourdain, making their distaste for the stuff pretty well known. This is, in my opinion, due to the abundance of low-quality, synthetic truffle oils that we tend to see carried in stores. I sort of equate it to buying a jug of Aunt Jemima “maple syrup” as opposed to a truly great, all-natural, 100% maple syrup. The difference is almost too great to measure, and you can see this in the bevy of truffle oils out there these days.
Truffle is truly one of my favorite flavors on earth, and luckily, I am able to capture it inexpensively via the high-quliawty natural truffle oils that are becoming more widely available. I buy this brand, and simply order it online so I have it around to drizzle in dishes like this creamy mushroom pasta, into cozy soups, stews, over mashed potatoes, into salad dressings, and into creamy risottos. I tested today’s pasta recipe with this truffle oil drizzled over the dish just after plating, and it was unreal. I found decadent, bold, undeniable mushroom flavor that shone brightly in every bite. I tuck in a few slices of salty pan-fried halloumi and shower the plate with pistachio dust (my gimmicky name for finely chopped pistachios) and tuck into one very fine vegetarian dinner.
But again, you can make this Creamy Mushroom Pasta with Fried Halloumi and Pistachio Dust with just the sliced fresh mushrooms and it will be absolutely fantastic. In fact, I’ve been doing that for years and it is what inspired me to play around with the mushroom-ness of the whole affair in the first place.
Creamy Mushroom Pasta with Fried Halloumi and Pistachio Dust
Ingredients
¾ to 1 lb. pasta (any noodle you like or have will work here, short or long)
2 Tbsp olive oil, plus extra for drizzling
2 oz. dried porcini mushrooms (optional)
16 oz. sliced baby bella mushrooms
1 tsp dried Italian seasoning
4 oz. goat cheese
Salt and pepper, as needed
4 oz. halloumi, thinly sliced
1/3 cup roasted and peeled pistachios, very finely chopped
Natural truffle oil, for drizzling (totally optional)
Instructions
Cook pasta according to package directions, in salted water, reserving 1 cup of the starchy cooking water for the sauce (just set that aside for now). Drain the pasta, return it to the pot, and drizzle with a little olive oil to keep it from sticking. Set aside for now.
Add the porcini to a small bowl, and add very hot water to cover. Allow them to soak and rehydrate for 15 minutes. Drain and very finely chop them – you can use a food processor if you like. You just want a very fine, almost paste-like consistency here.
In a large pan set over medium heat, add 2 Tbsp olive oil, the sliced mushrooms, and Italian seasoning. Cook, stirring occasionally, until the mushrooms have released their moisture and browned nicely; about 10 minutes or so. Season lightly with salt and pepper.
To the mushrooms, add the chopped/pureed porcinis, the goat cheese and the reserved pasta water. Stir until the cheese has essentially melted and everything has come together in a sauce. Let it simmer for about 5 minutes.
Taste, season as needed and pour over the pasta. Stir to combine. If it seems dry, you can use a little extra water until it gets nice and creamy.
Cook the sliced halloumi in the same pan in which you prepared your sauce, set over medium heat, adding a little oil if needed. Cook the halloumi for about 30 seconds per side, or just until each side is golden brown. Serve the pasta with slices of fried halloumi, an extra drizzle of olive or truffle oil (if using), and a sprinkling of pistachio “dust.”
Notes
If you really want the goat cheese flavor to be prominent, use 8 ounces instead of 4, and a little more water to thin it out.
