Earlier this week the squeals of joy could be heard throughout the neighborhood when my Rachel Ray subscription finally started and arrived in the mailbox! I will admit that I am not a huge fan of Rach's shows, but I used to LOVE watching $40 a day when I was in college, and I love her magazine. It is a fairly good mix of home, cooking, and travel.
I found myself drooling and staring at the picture of her meat-free Mushroom-and-Marsala Pappardelle recipe. Kudos to the food porn staff at her magazine, they won me over! As I have mentioned over and over again, my sister refuses to eat mushrooms...ugh...problem. I decided to twist the recipe around a little bit and accommodate her taste buds with chicken. I think if I had served two vegetarian meals in a row, since tomorrow is Meatless Monday, my dad would be cringing in fear of another vegetarian week on the blog!
So, with all of that being said, I have typed up Rachel's recipe below and added my notes in italics! It was really delicious, filling, and there was plenty to go around...twice! Be sure to read the recipe all the way through before cooking so you don't encounter any surprises along the way!
Mushroom and Marsala Pappardelle
Source: Every Day with Rachel Ray - February 2011
Yields 6 generous servings
Ingredients
2 cups chicken or vegetable stock
A handful of dried mushrooms, such as procini
Salt and Pepper
1 pound of pappardelle or other wide, long-cut pasta
4 tablespoons butter
3/4 pound cremini or portobello mushrooms, thinly sliced
1 large fresh bay leaf
1 small bunch tuscan kale or swiss chard, stemmed and very thinly sliced
4 shallots, chopped
2 cloves garlic, finely chopped
Freshly grated nutmeg. to taste
About 3/4 cup marsala wine
1 cup heavy cream
Afew sprigs fresh sage, very thinly sliced
Grated parmigiano-reggiano cheese
Right off the bat I can tell you that I eliminated all of the mushrooms from above, as well as the parmigiano-reggiano and sage. I also replaced the marsala with red cooking wine that I already had in the house! You will also need approximately 1 pound of thinly sliced skinless, boneless chicken and a teaspoon of either flour or cornstarch.
To Prepare
Place the stock and dried mushrooms in a saucepan and bring to a low boil. Lower the heat and reconstitute. Remove the mushrooms with a slotted spoon and chop.
Since I was not using mushrooms, I completely skipped this step. Instead, I started heating the butter in a frying pan with the sliced chicken and bay leaf.
Bring a large pot of water to a boil, salt it, add the pasta and cook until al dente. Drain, reserving a little of the pasta cooking water.
I could not find pappardelle at my grocery store, so I replaced it with paccheri. Paccheri is essentially HUGE, ridge free, ziti!
While the pasta is working, heat the butter in a large skillet over medium heat. Add the cremini (or portobello) mushrooms and bay leaf and increase the heat to medium-high. Cook, stirring occasionally, until the mushrooms darken, 7 to 8 minutes.
Again, I used this step to prepare the chicken. Of course, the cooking time was a little longer since I was working with raw chicken! Be sure to cook the chicken until it has turned white and its juices run clear.
Add the kale (or swiss chard), shallots, and garlic; season with salt, pepper, and nutmeg.
I used swiss chard and cut it down into strips that were approximately a 1/2 inch wide. The size worked nicely for the dish - the chard was present without being lost or overwhelming! Rachel's recipe also calls for freshly grated nutmeg, which is great, but I used pre-ground from my spice rack!
Cooking for about 7 minutes longer, then stir in the wine. Add the chopped reconstituted mushrooms and all but 1/4 cup of the mushroom infused stock (the grit settles to the bottom of the pan as the mushrooms reconstitute).
I added 1 3/4 cup of vegetable stock (approximately 1 can).
Stir in the cream and cook to reduce and thicken. Toss the pasta with the sauce, adding the reserved pasta cooking water if the sauce is too thick to coat the pasta nicely. Garnish with the sage and serve with the cheese.
I had a little problem with the sauce thickening. Despite following her fluid amounts in the recipe, it would not thicken! I cooked it for a while and had no results, so I added it to the pasta pan and turned on medium heat in the hopes that some of the sauce would be absorbed by the pasta and would help it thicken. I ended up pulling a little of the sauce out of the pan and mixing it with a teaspoon of cornstarch, made a paste, and added it back to the pan. The sauce thickened within a minute of me adding the cornstarch and sauce paste! If you don't have cornstarch, flour will have the same effect! Also, to help my novice chefs along, 1 cup of heavy cream is the 1/2 pint sized container at the grocery store!
