I’ve always loved pasta, but as I mentioned in the post about cauliflower-crust pizza, I’m trying to avoid un-soaked or un-fermented grains these days, especially wheat.  I haven’t missed the frequent pasta meals from past years as much as I would have thought.  Pasta is, in the end, a pleasantly chewy vehicle for sauce.  I do miss the slight chewiness, though, and I definitely miss the sauce in its many avatars.  Fresh tomato.  Slow-cooked tomato.  Mushroom.  Alfredo.  Sautéed onions, garlic and Italian parsley.  So good, so simple.

So, what are the alternatives?  There’s spaghetti squash, which I love.  There’s putting the sauce on vegetables, also good.  But neither of these has the same satisfaction as a slightly thick, chewy noodle.

I hit upon the idea of using mushrooms as pasta noodles some months back, when I tried to use thinly-sliced portabella, and mix it with a brand of pasta made from sprouted grains for the sake of texture.  It was tasty, but portabellas are a bit less firm when cooked than I’d like, and the texture can be slippery.  If only I had a firmer large mushroom, I thought.

Luckily, I went mushroom hunting last week with my friend Ted.  We came upon a gold mine of lobster mushrooms and chanterelles.  I’ve been putting the chanterelles in everything (with roast chicken, in a scramble, etc), but I’m newer to cooking with lobster mushrooms.  They’re very firm.  And very large.

So, I cut up part of a large mushroom, primarily the stem, into pasta-like ribbons.  I sautéed them in butter.  I ate them with some fresh tomato sauce with basil and parmesan. 

It was delicious.  The subtle taste of the mushroom, still oily from all the butter, holds its flavor under the slightly-sweet, garlicky tomato sauce.  The ribbons of mushroom do not break easily after being sautéed, but they bend and curl like noodles.  They are firm, but soft and slightly chewy.  Golden-yellow from the sauté, they’re lovely.

If you’re in the Pacific Northwest (and probably other areas), lobster mushrooms are in season right now.  Both of the foragers I’ve seen at the local farmers markets have them.  Get yourself a big one, and try out this recipe.

Click here if you can’t see the pictures.

Lobster Mushroom [Not] Pasta with Fresh Tomato Sauce

A large lobster mushroom or portion of one

several very ripe tomatoes, chopped (skin on is fine)

cloves of garlic, chopped (about 2-4 per person)

butter

fresh basil

parmesan cheese

salt

Remove any bad parts from the lobster mushroom and brush clean.  Slice the stem and other firm parts into thin ribbons, whatever size noodle you like.  Some will break as you cut, that’s fine.

Heat a generous amount of butter in a pan.  Add the ribbons of mushroom and stir, adding more butter if necessary.  Add some salt.  When the mushrooms are softened, set them aside in a dish.

In the same pan, using some of the remaining butter if there is any, sauté your garlic.  I like to get the garlic slightly golden, but some people prefer it fresh-tasting, and wait until after the tomatoes have been added; that tastes good too.  Add the chopped tomatoes and cook until they’re broken down, they taste sweet, and a lot of the liquid has cooked off, a few minutes after they look like this:

Add some fresh basil and turn off the heat.  Pour sauce onto mushroom-noodles and serve, with optional parmesan, more fresh basil, and black pepper.

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