Fancy Mushroom Pasta - a Birthday Foodie Treat

Making Decisions!

It's almost my birthday, so today we went on what has become a bit of a birthday tradition in the family - a trip to Everleigh Farmers Market at Carriageworks. It's foodie heaven. We take $50 each and a few bags and taste and buy our way though as much as we can manage.
Tasting highlights included:-

• fantastic sweet strawberries
• Trout sausages (sadly sold out)
• The creamiest Yoghurt 
• Middle Eastern Ice Creams - we bought a halva one and a turkish delight one.
• Blackberry, Blueberry and almond Jam
• lemongrass chicken
• salted caramel sauce
• Pear, Pecan and Ginger Museli - bought
• lemon myrtle cheesecake
• Amazing Goats cheeses - bought a goats curd maninated in garlic.

Lunch (which was a little obscene after all that tasting) was a shared combination of a "Billy Kwong" Pancake with asian vegie salad and organic egg (and we actually saw Kylie Kwong - one of my favourite chefs),  a fancy Toasted cheese sandwich (Croque Madam) from "Bird Cow Fish" (Alex Herbert was there too!!) and some Indonesian Vegetarian Spring Rolls. YUM.

Our Combined Haul!

Tonight we used the first of our haul for dinner - a fancy creamy mushroom pasta made with the amazing mushrooms we bought and an awesome Cherry Pie Ian chose. Sadly I didn't photograph the pasta - out of the blogging habits - but you can see the mushrooms and the pie in the photo of all the things we bought.

This is the way I made the pasta.

Creamy Mushroom Pasta

Ingredients

2 Tb Extra Virgin Olive Oil

40g butter

2 cloves garlic, crushed

1 large red onion, diced

500g mixed mushrooms, sliced (we used 300g Portobellos, 100g fresh shiitakes and 100g Black Cloud Fungus)

125ml red wine

100ml fresh cream

1 tspn truffle oil (optional)

500g Pasta of your choice (we had little elbows)

Pepper & Salt

Method

Put a large pot of water on for the pasta

Heat the oil and half the butter in a heavy based pan.

Cook the onion and garlic gently til soft.

Put the pasta in to cook

Add the remaining butter and the mushrooms and cook, stirring, until they are all soft.

Add the red wine, letting it bubble and reduce a little.

Stir in the cream, truffle oil and a generous grind of salt and pepper.

Simmer for a few more minutes, while pasta finishes cooking and is drained.

Stir pasta through the sauce.

Serve sprinkled in chopped parsley and with a green salad on the side (Cos and Cucumber with balsamic vinegarette today)

Very simple - but delicious because they were fantastic fresh mushrooms!

In the coming days we have the following market treats to make and/or eat to look forward to:-

• tasty museli for breakfast
• Mia plans to make kale chips and stuffed zucchini (courgette) flowers tomorrow
• A busy monday evening with no cooking time we'll have a meal of pumpkin felafels, greek pitta, tabouli, baba ghanoush and dolmades.
• the lovely ice creams
• the hazelnut and coconut butter (Mia made today with the market hazelnuts) on the 2 sourdoughs Ian chose.
• a salad with my new pot of french tarragon growing on the window sill.
• smoked salmon and dill muffins and dried fruit and vegetable "Flats" in our lunchboxes
• something yummy with the Goats curd.
• Pizzas this friday night with the very tasty roasted tomato and basil sauce Ian bought

Days of treats still to look forward to. A fabulous Birthday Outing!

Nicola

Playing with the dry ice from  the ice cream packaging.