Chestnut pasta with mushroom and chesnuts
Chestnuts are a quintessential autumn ingredient yet very few people dare to cook with them. Not the case over here in Italy where they are integrated in to a variety of different dishes at this time of the year.
This dish is soulful and exactly what we need as we’re heading in to the colder weeks of the year.
serves 4
for the pasta
150g chestnut flour
300g organic plain flour (type 00)
5 large eggs
for the sugo
2 shallots, finely sliced
1 clove of garlic
75ml extra virgin olive oil
200g cooked chestnuts (vacuum packed works well), sliced
300g chestnut mushrooms (or similar small mushrooms), sliced
50ml fresh cream
A handful of flat leaf parsley
A handful of sage leaves (around 20 leaves)
Grated parmesan
If you are making the pasta yourself then mix the two flours with the eggs to make a soft dough and then kneed for around 10 minutes. This is quite therapeutic! Roll out on a floured surface to about 2mm thick and then let it rest for about 10 minutes. Cut roughly in to asymmetrical shapes, each one of a few cms wide and around 10cm long.
Bring a large pan of salted water to the boil.
Gently fry the sliced shallots and a clove of garlic until fragrant and add the chestnuts with an additional glug of olive oil. Keep turning in the pan for around 5 minutes until they are starting to crisp at the edges. Add the sage leaves and turn in the pan for a further 2 minutes. Then add the mushrooms and perhaps keep the heat a little higher at this point to allow them to take on some decent colour. After 2 minutes have passed, drop the pasta in to the boiling salted water – it will only need 2-3 minutes if you want to keep it al dente.
As a final touch to your sugo, add a little cream and some pasta water along with the parsley and grated parmesan. Shake the pan to bring it all together.
Drain the pasta and stir through the sauce.