This turned out really well and is fairly quick to make. I was suprised to be eating whole leaves of sage and liking it! This was my first time working with portabella mushrooms, and I struggled with it. They were difficult to scrape clean, the mushrooms easily fell apart, and slicing wasn't all that easy, either. Plus it looked disgusting (worse than chicken!) while I was working with it.
I used only a half pound of spaghetti (recipe calls for 3/4 lb) and also cut the other ingredients accordingly. I'd say the original recipe is 6 servings, not 4. I used whole wheat spaghetti, which goes very nicely with this recipe. One of the steps has you adding 6 Tbs of butter(!!!!) I halved it, and I still feel I could have had less. Probably 3 Tbs is all you need if making the full recipe. I like that the majority of the ingredients I probably already have at home.
- Lessons learned:
- Start the water for the pasta before prepping everything.
- Remember the cheese! (I added it on after the photo.)
- Placing a measuring cup in the colander is a great reminder to reserve the pasta water.
- Cooking sage leaves in butter makes them crunchy. Weird!
- Spaghetti with Portabellas, Sage & Walnuts (Fine Cooking, March 2007, p.26A)
Comments (5)
I love crisped sage. It's great on butternut squash with orzo.
I think it looks great. Fine Cooking tends to be heavy on the fats. I think you did the right thing by cutting back.
Posted by Sheri | April 18, 2007 10:13 PM
Posted on April 18, 2007 22:13
Oh wow that sounds delicious! I will have to try it soon.
One fun thing about cooking is learning my taste preferences in terms of ingredients. I am also discovering all sorts of foods that I may have eaten before, but not really recognized. Such as butternut squash!
Posted by Julia | April 19, 2007 2:09 AM
Posted on April 19, 2007 02:09
Ha! I loved your comment about the portobellos. Cleaning those gills out really creeps me out - I don't know why. I'd rather deal with raw chicken. I've always wanted to try that recipe from FC - the whole wheat pasta seems like good idea.
Posted by Toni | April 26, 2007 9:47 AM
Posted on April 26, 2007 09:47
I love, Love, LOVE crisped sage! If the portabellas were a hassle, you could just use cremini. They are baby portabellas. You don't have to scrape them.
Posted by Amy | May 1, 2007 11:54 AM
Posted on May 1, 2007 11:54
I've made this dish twice since this post. The second time, the sage seemed not so crispy and somewhat bitter. Yikes, that's not the flavor I wanted, at all!
I fixed it/figured it out tonight. The more butter there is, the quicker and easier it is for the sage to crisp. Since I used less butter last time, I kept it on the pan for 5 minutes and figured it was done enough. This time I used the butter amount that was called for and made sure the sage had changed color and was crisp. (This took over 5 minutes for the temperature I was using.) Then instead of dumping all the ingredients back in the pan, I picked out each sage leaf with a tong, and dumped the butter out into a bowl. Then put all the ingredients back in the pan. So that's what I'd recommend: Use the same amounts of butter called for, but dump the excess after the sage.
Oh! The large portobellos available at Whole Foods had a big sign saying they were local (from Texas). These mushrooms had tan colored gills and weren't the nasty black. These mushrooms were also thicker and didn't fall apart at all while I was scraping out the gills. Nice!!
PS - Putting the measuring cup in the colander works every time. Also I keep forgetting the cheese every time.
Posted by Julia | February 10, 2008 12:37 AM
Posted on February 10, 2008 00:37