When life hands you lemons, you make lemonade. (Or, if you're Midwestern hip hop group Atmosphere, "When life hands you lemons, you paint that shit gold!") But what do you do when your awesome neighbor hands you about a half pound of freshly-foraged morel mushrooms all nice and clean and ready to go? Well, if you're me, you chop 'em up, toast them in some browned butter and olive oil and reflect on the good fortune that landed you in the house next to the Oros family.
This dish, meant to showcase the morels, of course, was delicious. If it had been just the wife and me eating I don't think I would have done anything other than morels in cream over pasta, but as the kids were dining too, and as they can sometimes be lukewarm on 'shrooms, I seared off some grape tomatoes, nice, sweet scallions and Italian sausage as a concession.
Overall, this dish was outstanding. The morels were as woodsy and meaty and earthy as their reputation has always suggested. The flavor was somewhat ethereal, like that of truffles, and I found myself enjoying the aroma as much as I did the taste. I ate a little slice of one of the mushrooms raw, and, to be honest, It didn't have much taste at all. But when I sauteed the mushrooms in fat, the complex yet subtle flavors truly insinuated themselves in the entire dish.
Initially, I'd been a little reluctant to add the tomatoes, so when I was cooking I tried to keep all the flavors as segregated as possible. I wanted this to be more like a "salad" than a "stew," if you know what I mean, so I cooked all the potentially competitive elements individually and only reunited them during plating. In the end, I thought the tomatoes added a nice color element and the acidity was a welcome counterpoint to the buttery-ness of the rest of the dish.
I did do two things which I consider mistakes with this pasta. First of all, next time, I will use a smoother noodle. I wanted to keep the sauce pretty thin and simple and I felt the spiral configuration of the pasta I chose would help it "cling." While this did turn out to be the case, the shape of the noodles was so similar to the shape of the morels that you didn't get that, "Oh, hey! I'm eating a friggin' morel here!" mouthfeeling that I'd hoped to achieve. I also unthinkingly included a few leaves of rosemary in the herb mince I used to finish the dish and its somewhat aggressive woodiness bullied the more sedate woodiness of the morels.
Still, although I'd do those two things differently next time, everyone liked this dish and I believe even the little ones could sense we were eating something pretty special. There were, needless to say, no leftovers.
Pasta with Fresh Morels
Morels
Grape tomatoes, halved
Scallions, roughly chopped
Sweet or hot Italian sausage, cooked individually and sliced
Garlic, come on, it's garlic
Smooth pasta
Fresh herbs (not to include rosemary,) minced
Nutmeg, grated
Hot pepper, flaked
S/P/OO
Grating Cheese (optional) (actually, everything on here is more or less optional)
Thank your neighbor profusely for the morels, then rush home to cook them. Slice off the stems and chop them into strips. Chop the morel tops, also into strips. Start boiling water for pasta and, in a separate pan, begin searing the sausage. Heat olive oil and butter to the smoke point in your "morel pan" and blacken your grape tomatoes. Remove tomatoes to a reserve dish, then add a little more fat to the pan. Start gently sauteing the morels in this pan, cooking the stems for about 3 minutes longer than the tops. When the sausage are done, slice them, return them to their pan with half the scallions and let them rest. When your pasta water boils, add the noodles. Toss the morel tops into the "morel" pan with the stems and begin gently sauteing them. As the pasta near readiness, up the heat under the shrooms to promote a little browning. If the mushrooms soak up too much oil, add more to the pan. Reignite the heat under the sausage/scallion pan, and, when it's starts crackling, toss in the garlic and cook for 30 seconds. Then add the tomatoes to the sausage pan to reheat. Drain the pasta and then toss it in the pan with the browned morels. Cut the heat, add a little fresh (uncooked) olive oil to the pasta and toss it with the remaining raw scallions, the herb mix, and, if you wish, your favorite grating cheese. Plate the noodles/morels mixture and then spoon the sausage, garlic, cooked scallion, tomato sauce on top. Try not to include too much of the meat fat because, although it's yummy, it'll detract from the mushrooms.
