Autumn comes with many things and one of them is harvest. Whether it is in form of pumpkins, late tomatoes, or wild mushrooms. Here in Latvia, we forage for mushrooms each year and while there are many kinds, chanterelles and porcini mushrooms are the favored ones. We have many chanterelle recipes and wild mushroom recipes that are somewhat traditional or at least traditional to this time of the year. Most of them feature them in a sauce with potatoes. Today I decided to make some homemade fettuccine and a silky alfredo sauce, and top it all with oven-baked crispy chanterelles. This wild mushroom fettuccine alfredo is a wonderful date-night dinner recipe. If you don’t want to make your own pasta, feel free to skip that part and serve this with any other store-bought or dried pasta of your choice.
How to make homemade pasta dough?
To make super yellow and beautiful pasta dough you only need two things. Flour and egg yolks. While I mostly make my pasta with whole eggs, I wanted to make something super-rich and beautiful in color, so I made this egg yolk dough instead. It was a little bit harder to get it to come together since egg white is much more sticky than the yolk. But after a few minutes of kneading and pinching and cutting it with a bench scraper, I got it all together.
This wild mushroom fettuccine alfredo can even be something that you and anyone else invited to dinner make all together.
How to form fettuccine without a pasta machine?
The dough has to be kneaded and well-rested. Then rolling it out will be super easy and result in perfectly smooth pasta noodles. The trick is to roll the dough out so it is equally as thick in all the places. Dust with semolina and flour in-between and that is it. For the perfect width, they are just a little bit narrower than tagliatelle. But you can totally eyeball it and cut them how thick or thin you want.
For the perfect crispy mushroom, I chose to bake them in the oven. The biggest problem with mushrooms is that they have a lot of water in them and that makes them steam not bake. And let’s be honest, I am not going to pan-fry mushrooms one by one, right? So, instead, I chose to throw them in the oven on a large sheet pan and let it do my work for me. It is a bigger problem when you need to really soak and wash them because that adds even more moisture to already very moist shrooms. But the trick to crispy mushrooms really is the oven. You may be wondering how to cook chanterelles or how to eat them. They are as easy to cook as any other mushroom that you can buy at your local grocers. And as most foraged things, they have a wonderful nutritional value.
The first time I heard about Alfredo sauce was in an American TV show. This is a recipe popular over there, not so much here. After some reading and researching, I came to a realization that it is pretty similar to bechamel. While there are many variations, some involving cream and skipping flour etc. I decided to stick to this true and tested one. Melt some butter, whisk with flour, milk, pasta water, salt, and cheese. That is it. No more no less. This wild mushroom fettuccine alfredo can’t be imagined with the creamy sauce covering the noodles.
With fall finally here, I am starting to give in to more elaborate cooking projects and returning to spend more time in the kitchen. Hopefully, this wild mushroom fettuccine alfredo is the beginning of a string of adventurous pasta recipes that will be born in my mind. Nevertheless, I will cook more. Or so I say every time I post something. Let’s just get to cooking and enjoy!
Wild mushroom Fettuccine alfredo
Ingredients
Homemade Fettuccine
- 200 g past flour
- 8 egg yolks
Oven-roasted mushrooms
- 500 g chanterelles or other wild mushrooms
- 4 cloves of garlic
- 2 tablespoons of extra virgin olive oil
- 1 tsp salt
- 1 tsp sugar
Alfredo sauce
- 80 g butter
- 2 tbsp flour
- 250 ml milk
- ½ tsp salt
- 50 g grated Parmigiano
- 200 ml pasta water
Instructions
- Make the pasta dough by mixing the flour with the egg yolks
- Knead the dough for 10 minutes
- Wrap in plastic wrap and rest in the fridge for 30 minutes
- Roll out to your desired thickness, just make sure that all of the dough is equally as thick
- Roll into a log and slice the log into 1.5 cm wide pieces
- Loosen the fettuccine, dust with semolina, and set aside
- Add washed whole chanterelles on a sheet pan and grate the garlic on top, sprinkle with salt, sugar, and drizzle with oil
- Bake at 200 c for 20 minutes with the ventilator on for extra crispy mushrooms
- To cook the pasta, bring a large pot of salted water to a boil, and cook the fettuccine for 3-5 minutes, drain, and reserve the pasta water
- To make the Alfredo sauce, in a pan melt the butter and start whisking
- Add in the flour, brown for 30 seconds
- Add the milk, water, and salt
- Continue whisking for 1 more minute before removing from heat
- Add the grated cheese and pasta and toss together
- Top with the mushrooms and enjoy
Notes
If you are on a pasta roll and want a different dreamy and creamy dinner, try this salmon pasta instead.