Farfelle ai Porcini e Capocollo

I have only made two kinds of pasta in the past - pasta with tomato sauce and sweet sausage, or baked pasta. The third kind of pasta that I made recently was the simplest of all.

I was struck by the earthly flavor of wild mushroom at a dinner last November and I wanted to cook with this kind of mushroom since then. Instead of wild mushroom, I got some dried porcini mushroom which has that intense woody flavor.

For good measure, I happened to have some capocollo cured meat in my refrigerator.






Ingredients (1 serving)
Farfelle pasta (bowtie pasta) or ANY kind of pasta.
Dried porcini mushroom, 4-5 pieces. Soaked in water 30 minutes before using. Save the juice.
1-2 slices of Capocollo
Green peas
Quarter of an onion





Instructions
1. Boil a pot of water and cook the pasta.
2. While the pasta is cooking, sauté the onion for 1 minute.
3. Add the mushroom, capocollo and cook for 1 minute.
4. Add the green peas and cook until the juice dries up. 
5. When the pasta is done, combine the pasta and the mushroom and toss everything to mix well.
6. Almost forgot salt and pepper for seasoning.

This pasta is very light and not heavy like the tomato or cream based pasta. I like to think that this pasta comes very close to how pasta should be made. The intriguing flavor of a cured meat combined with the earthy scent of the mushroom is balanced by the freshness of the green peas. The pasta, is like a blank canvas and the rest are colors.

I have since made variations of this pasta with andouille sausage (just because I happened to have some), and left over grilled chicken The option is limitless as to what you can put into this dish.

2 minutes after serving this dish to myself
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