Recipe: Jessica Prescott’s Creamy Mushroom Pasta Is Ready for Winter Weeknights

Jessica Prescott’s latest cookbook will make you want to touch (and eat) grass. Epic Veg, the follow-up to Epic Salads, offers 80 veggie-forward dishes that turn mushrooms magnificent and silverbeet into a centrepiece. Plus, Prescott shares tips for building flavour and reducing waste with whatever’s wilting in your crisper.

Take this creamy mushroom pasta. The winter staple layers portobellos, silverbeet, garlic and a pinch of porcini powder into a rich, double-cream sauce.

“It tastes indulgent, and it is, but it’s also packed full of greens and garlic, making it a bowl of comfort food with secret superpowers,” Prescott writes. Better still, it comes together in less than 45 minutes – ideal for a weeknight when you want something that feels like a treat.

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Jessica Prescott’s Creamy Mushroom Pasta

Serves 4
Prep time: 15 minutes
Cooking time: 25 minutes

Ingredients

Generous glug of extra-virgin olive oil
450g portobello mushrooms, very thinly sliced
Salt, to taste
1 bunch silverbeet (Swiss chard), tough stems discarded, leaves very thinly sliced and immersed in a big bowl of water
2 French shallots, thinly sliced
5–6 garlic cloves, crushed
300ml thick (double/heavy) cream
20ml lemon juice
1 tbsp porcini mushroom powder
¼ tsp ground nutmeg
30g parmesan, grated, plus additional to serve
300g pasta of choice
125ml reserved pasta cooking water
Black pepper, to serve

Method

Place a large, flat-bottomed pan over a medium–high heat. Add a splash of olive oil and the sliced mushrooms, along with a generous pinch of salt. Cook for about 10 minutes, stirring occasionally, until the mushrooms release their liquid and most of it cooks off. Push the mushrooms to the side of the pan and add the chopped greens, shaking off any excess water. Cook for a further 5 minutes until wilted and reduced, then incorporate into the mushrooms and push to the side of the pan.

Add a little more oil, then the shallots, and cook for around 3 minutes until soft and fragrant. Add the garlic and cook for a minute or two, then stir into the mushrooms and greens.

Add the cream, lemon juice, porcini powder, nutmeg and parmesan. Bring to a gentle simmer and cook for 3–4 minutes, or until the sauce thickens.

Meanwhile, cook your pasta according to packet directions then drain, reserving the pasta cooking water. Add the cooked pasta to the pan and toss well, adding splashes of pasta water as needed to loosen the sauce so it coats the pasta. Serve with grated parmesan and plenty of black pepper.

This is an edited extract from Epic Veg by Jessica Prescott published by Hardie Grant Books.