Mushroom and thyme tagliatelle

Mushrooms are popular in northern Italian dishes and this dish seems perfect for the change in seasons - somewhere between summer and autumn where the sun is still occasionally shining but the air has turned a little colder and the sky has that crisp, rich blue hue - reminiscent of a scene in the Italian Alps or on the lakes of Italy. I used some homegrown ingredients from my Dad's allotment, including onion, garlic and fresh thyme!

Mushroom and thyme tagliatelle

Servings: 2 people

Ingredients:

• 150g tagliatelle

• 1 small onion

• 100g wild mushrooms, torn and stalks finely chopped

• 1 tbsp truffle oil

• Olive oil

• 1 garlic clove

• Fresh thyme, leaves picked

• 30g parmesan, grated

Ingredients for mushroom and thyme tagliatelle

Instructions:

1. Finely chop the onion and crush the garlic clove with the back of a knife, heat some olive oil in a pan over a medium heat and add the onion, crushed garlic clove (you'll remove this later) and season.

2. Bring a pan of water to the boil, add salt and the tagliatelle.

3. Whilst the pasta is cooking and when the onion is soft, remove the crushed garlic cove, add 1 tbsp of truffle oil and a knob of unsalted butter, and add the mushrooms along with thyme.

4. Once the mushrooms are soft, you're tagliatelle should be almost done, spoon the tagliatelle from the saucepan to the pan along with some of the pasta water and start to combine the pasta with the ingredients. As you do this add the parmesan to the dish to help create a silky sauce, add more pasta water as required.

5. Serve with a drizzle of truffle oil and parmesan.

Mushroom and thyme tagliatelle

Top Tip: As with all my recipes I like to keep them flexible and easy to make. So you can use any mushrooms but wild mushrooms or chestnut mushrooms tend to be tastier. They didn't have wild mushrooms when I headed for the weekly supermarket shop so we used their Asian selection instead!

Take part in my #MeatFreeMonday challenge as part of #HertsHour where people recreate one of my recipes and then share their photo on social media ... don't forget to tag @cookingcarafes to feature!

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