Pasta with Mushrooms and Olives
I’d been wanting to make pasta with green olives, but I had a half pound of mushrooms in need of cooking so I looked around for a combination of the two. Flavor 365 promised “perfect” results in 25 minutes. Still, I couldn’t resist making the olives green and adding a few ingredients of my own. Because the kids prefer plain pasta with cheese, I cut the recipe down to two. Scale up the pasta and cheese if you’re entertaining toddlers.
Ingredients
- ½ lb. pasta
- 3 T. extra virgin olive oil, separated
- a handful of pine nuts (optional)
- ½ lb. mushrooms, preferably baby bellas
- 3 cloves garlic, minced
- 12 pitted olives, preferably castelvetranos
- 1 T. capers (optional)
- 2 T. white wine
- ½ tsp. salt
- dash basil
- dash oregano
- dash marjoram
- pepper to taste
- ½ c. grated parmesan or asiago, divided
Directions
- Boil pasta with a generous amount of salt. Reserve some pasta water before draining.
- Wipe (don’t wash) and slice the mushrooms. Halve or slice the olives.
- In a large, dry saucepan, toast the pine nuts.
- Remove pine nuts and add 1 T. of the oil to the hot pan.
- Sear the mushrooms for three minutes on the first side, without stirring or overcrowding the pan. Flip and sear the other side as well. If you need to do a second batch, add more oil.
- Reduce heat.
- Push mushrooms aside and add another T. of oil and the garlic. Fry for less than a minute.
- Deglaze the pan with the wine and cook down for a minute.
- Add or return all remaining ingredients except half the cheese to the pan.
- Add the pasta and about ¼ c. pasta water. Mix well.
- Remove from heat and serve immediately, topped with remaining cheese.
Variants
You can substitute broth for the wine.
Rather than my additions, the original recipe suggested adding chicken, anchovies, spinach, or sun-dried tomato paste.
I considered adding cherry tomatoes.
For a cream sauce, add ¾ cup heavy cream and a dash of nutmeg after deglazing, then simmer gently for a couple of minutes. Omit pasta water unless the sauce gets too thick.
