Mushroom Pasta "Risotto"

A few weeks ago we invited a new neighbor over for dinner, only to find that a cake was still in batter form after 45 minutes in the oven -- our oven had broken, refused to light, gone on strike over the immense amount of meat we continue to put into it. The night turned into Mark strapping on his headlamp to inspect the oven and, eventually, the two of us running back and forth across the street, carrying piles of ingredients and uncooked food to our neighbor's house so we could use their working oven.

Normally, not having an oven wouldn't be a huge deal, but Mark and began to realize how much we actually use the oven for meals when the weather is cold. We began to think that using the stove top was going to be quite a challenge -- perhaps we would make bread in the dutch oven, or find ways to roast meat on the burners. Well, that might be a challenge for another time, since we ended up (thanks to busy schedules, etc.) mostly eating out. But, we did take the opportunity to investigate one of Mark Bittman's columns in the New York Times, in which he described pasta cooked as if it were risotto (recipe here). We may not have read the article in much detail, but we definitely knew that we liked the idea, seeing as how we both remembered seeing it in the paper when we were trying to think of things to cook.

I had, in fact, had an inexplicable craving for mushrooms a few days before, and we had gone to the farmer's market to find a small stall that usually sells little boxes of fresh, cleaned mushrooms. We ended up with a small box of elm oyster mushrooms that were hanging out in the fridge. So, we decided to bust out our container of dried pastas and get cracking.


First, we chopped up the mushrooms into bite-sized pieces and threw them into a fry pan with some garlic and onions. While many recipes would suggest adding pasta to this and then adding stock, we decided to (OK, perhaps unthinkingly) make a mushroom stock instead, adding wine and vegetable broth to the mushrooms. We then added this mixture to some corkscrew pasta a bit at a time, watching it get plumper and softer until it reached the consistency we liked.

Then, we stirred it all together, added a ton of grated parmesan cheese, grated lemon zest, and topped it with parsley. The pasta had a good bite, the lemon really brought out the flavors of the stock and mushrooms. It tasted even better the next day.