In my assembly of cookbooks there is a special book about pasta: Vincenzo Buonassisi’s pasta cookbook (published in the 70s) with lots of pasta recipes. It’s a cookbook without any photos & the recipes are short – reduced to the essentials. Nevertheless it’s a treasury of ideas how to prepare pasta adding vegetables, meat, fish and seafood … (As a rule the recipes start with 500 g pasta as the basis!)
Browsing the cookbook I stumbled upon simple recipes about pasta with vegetables. A recipe with mushrooms and a recipe with peas seemed more or less the same – so having in my fridge some mushrooms and in my freezer frozen peas I started a fusion of both.
Well … there are no tomatoes, no Italian herbs, no olive oil … the sauce is based on butter creating a nice, soft background flavor for the vegetables. The spicy edge only comes from grated Parmesan …
The pasta (mezzi rigatoni) is cooked until soft. It will take quite long for this type of pasta (about almost 15 min).
In the meantime there is enough time for trimming and chopping the mushrooms as well as the scallions. All is softly fried in butter. Finally the frozen peas are added. I grated also the Parmesan to be mixed with the vegetables when ready. Then the pasta marches in the frying pan and is quickly mixed with the rest – ready for serving.
Enjoy!
- 150 g mezzi rigatoni (short rigatoni)
- 150 g mushrooms
- 150 g peas (frozen)
- 3 – 4 scallions
- 50 g butter
- 30 g Parmesan (finely grated)
- salt & pepper (to taste)
- saucepan (for the pasta)
- colander (for the pasta)
- frying pan
- grater (for the Parmesan)
- In the saucepan: bring water to a boil, add salt & cook the pasta until soft (about 15 min for mezzi rigatoni). Drain the pasta in the colander, keep the pasta warm & set aside.
- In the meantime: Grate the Parmesan & set aside.
- Trim & chop the scallions & set aside.
- Trim & chop the mushrooms & set aside.
- Melt the butter in the frying pan.
- Fry the onions & the mushrooms – softly. Nothing shall get burnt.
- Add the frozen peas – and some tablespoons of the pasta cooking water.
- Add salt & pepper to taste.
- After about 20 min add the finely grated Parmesan & mix.
- Add the pasta & mix.
- Serve at once. (You may serve grated Parmesan extra when serving!)
- not recommended!
- You may prepare the vegetables (w/o the grated Parmesan) beforehand and store it in the fridge.
