Cencioni Pasta with Caramelized Shallots in a Creamy Mushroom Sauce

As you may have been able to discern from my seasonal seed giveaways, I am addicted to gardening. I’ve tried my hand at growing many a vegetable, fruit, and flower, but up until very recently, never had I tried cultivating a fungi. I was always intrigued by the idea of growing them. My Theio Niko had a large mushroom-growing heap in his backyard that I remember being covered with mushrooms, and when I thought about how expensive many types of mushrooms can be when purchased from the store, growing them at home made a lot of sense. This inexperience in fungi-growing was remedied when I got my indoor brown oyster mushroom growing kit from Gourmet Mushroom Products. It arrived as a little white log, about 4 inches in diameter and 10 inches tall, with a large and perforated plastic baggie, a sponge, and detailed instructions

Hello, friend.

To start growing them, you cut two little x’s in two sides of the log and place the log standing vertically on top of the sponge in a bowl filled with a couple inches of water. You place the plastic baggie over the log and make sure that it touches the water at the bottom of the bowl, and then place the bowl in an area that gets lots of fresh air and indirect sunlight. The window by my desk was a perfect location, and after about a week, I had a nice little brown oyster mushroom colony growing! HUZZAH!!! Once I harvested the mushrooms, I read through the directions again and saw that I could dry out the log for a few weeks, and then repeat the process again for more mushrooms. Which I did promptly.

So now I’ve had a couple more harvests of mushrooms, and I couldn’t be happier about my new fungi growing experience and fancy produce bundle. If you’re looking for a fun holiday gift for a foodie or gardening fanatic, I’d highly recommend this kit. It would be a great project to do with kids, too, because of the quick turnaround between “planting” and harvesting. And at $16.95, it doesn’t break the bank, either. Not to mention the loads of tasty mushrooms you end up with.

I used my mushrooms to make this rich little vegetarian pasta dish. A creamy oyster mushroom sauce paired with Devo’s wild mushroom & sage olive oil (my personal favorite for bread dipping), asiago cheese, caramelized shallots, and cencioni pasta created quite the dinner for Jeremy and myself. Cencioni pasta is a very thick oval that’s rough on one side to help trap the sauce in it’s crevasses, which it does quite nicely in this dish. It was slightly sweet from the shallots, but had a hearty and earthy flavor from the dairy and mushrooms. Overall, a delicious and filling vegetarian meal!

1 cup raw cashews, soaked in water for at least 4 hours or overnight

1 tablespoon extra virgin olive oil

1 large yellow onion, chopped

1 teaspoon kosher salt

1 pound mushrooms, cut into 1/4-inch thick slices

6 cloves garlic, minced

start with 1/2 teaspoon salt, then add other 1/2 teaspoon when add mushrooms

add another tablespoon evoo and remaining 1/2 teaspoon salt

12 ounces dried fettuccine