Dish: Creamy Mushroom Stroganoff
Difficulty: Pretty easy
Utensils Used: Wooden Spoon, Garlic Crusher
Cock Ups: 2 ingredient mix ups, but otherwise this went almost smoothly
Cooking: After missing the set off for Running Club by a mere 5 minutes, I suddenly found myself with some unexpected time.
Cook something nice for tea, suggested the Boyfriend. Yes, he does know me. Very well. And he's not normally prone to optimism.
Sat all dressed up in my fluorescents with no place to go, I perused the internet in the Morrison's car park and decided on this recipe.
The recipe said to bring a pan of water to the boil and add tagliatelle to cook for ten minutes - suggesting you prepared the rest of the dish while you waited. Now, many times I've tried things like this and ended up burning the thing you leave cooking while I failed to prepare the rest in time. So I thought HA! You are not going to catch me out with THAT trick THIS time.
Such is my misplaced confidence that I know better than the recipe.
So instead I started by cutting up an onion and a load of mushrooms. The recipe did specify weights, but in the interest of saving on the time and washing up, I just measured by eye.
The onions and mushrooms were sautéed on a high heat (I remembered what sautéed meant, yay!) for about five minutes. I then added a crushed clove of garlic and 2tsps of paprika, cooking for a further minute or so, stirring frequently.
As you can see, it was sizzling nicely, with all the mushrooms reducing down. It smelled divine.
I had, by this point, decided it was safe to put the tagliatelle on, and it was resolutely refusing to come to the boil, despite being on the highest heat setting.
Three tablespoons of sherry (er... red wine. What? I'm not buying sherry I'm never going to drink!) 1tbsp of tomato puree and a squeeze of lemon (read 'a slosh of lemon juice leftover from pancake day') were added. I missed out the mustard for similar reasons I altered the sherry. This was all then cooked for another minute or so.
It had all turned a delicious brown colour and smelled of mushroom and wine - lovely. Then 150mls of crème frâiche was added...
... and made it look like sick.
While this mixture was warming up, I tidied away food waste into a new addition to the Disaster Kitchen - a recycle bin...
...and the pasta still refused to boil, making me regret my decision to ignore the recipe.
While I waited for the Boyfriend to return from Running Club, I chopped some fresh er... parsley. Yeah, honestly it wasn't some coriander I happened to have in the fridge. Does anyone actually pay attention to garnish anyway? I then removed the pasta from its almost boiling water to prevent it turning into Blancmange.
Of course, this meant by the time I came to serve it, it had set in a solid lump.
Result: Despite timing issues and a few ingredient mix ups, I was pleased with the result.
Taste Test: Though it looked like sick, it certainly didn't taste like it. The Boyfriend picked up on the badly cooked pasta, but had no complaints about the sauce. Which, from him, is high praise indeed!
Overall Verdict: Pretty easy, pretty tasty. I'd make this again.
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| Creamy Mushroom Stroganoff |
