Pfifferlingen + Spaghetti nero

I’ve long been meaning to do a post on pfifferlinge (chanterelles in English), but I don’t usually eat them with anything, so it would’ve been a bit of a boring post.  However, on Saturday, Kookie, Katrin, and I went to Trier and stopped by Strauss Inovation (think gourmet food store with an identity crisis).  Browsing through the pasta section, I found a pack of spaghetti nero – pasta made with squid ink.

I thought, “Hey, that’s a pretty good colour contrast, right?  White plate, black pasta, orange mushrooms?  I’m sold.”

So here we are: pfifferlingen with spaghetti nero.  It’s a pretty good harvest dish, I think – like most mushrooms, pfifferlingen are excellent this time of year (though still rather expensive).  Pfifferlingen are wild mushrooms that have a characteristic light orange colour and real pfifferlingen have the gills running down the stem.  They’re easy to cook, but they need to be washed thoroughly (I rinsed them in cold water), unless you want a little something extra in your food…

The pfifferlingen have a meaty texture, and the classic way to cook them is just to fry them up in butter.  An alternative is to add them to a cream sauce, but I neither want to consume so much cream, or have the patience to make one!  The amounts given below are flexible, of course – the recipe isn’t going  to fail if you double the amount of pfifferlingen and half the amount of pasta =)

Ingredients:

• 100g pfifferlinge
• 150g pasta (depends on how much you want to eat)
• 30g butter
• salt and olive oil to taste

1. Cook the pasta anyway you like – I like to do the “Janet special”: stick the pasta into a pot of water, turn on the burner to max, wait for the water to boil, then turn it off.  I’m pretty sure that’s not the proper way to cook pasta, but it’s so time efficient…

2. Meanwhile, wash the pfifferlingen and put them into a skillet (I have a non-stick, but it doesn’t matter, as you’re going to add butter to it).  Turn on the heat to max.

3. Add the butter to the pan and wait for the mushrooms to start releasing water.  Fry until the water is evaporated and the liquid inside the pan almost turns clear.

4. Drain the pasta and add some olive oil and salt to it.  Top with the pfifferlingen.

Comments

I should have left more of the water in the mushrooms – unfortunately, I stepped away to use MSN, and by the time I came back, all the water was gone =(  Also, when I drained the pasta, it smelled really strange…kind of fishy.  It didn’t taste that way, though, so maybe it was just my imagination.  And the rumours that the squid ink in black pasta will stain your teeth are not true – I checked in the mirror straight away =)

Coming soon: okonomiyaki!  May also get a mini oven like Kookie so I can bake things in my apartment…(American) Thanksgiving is coming up soon…