It’s hard to believe that a pasta sauce made with so few ingredients can taste so good! The secret to this sauce is the combination of butter, pasta water and umami-rich soy sauce, which mellows and becomes deeply savoury and almost mushroomy in flavour. The same effect can be achieved with Marmite, but we particularly love this version garnished with crispy shimeji mushrooms.
Make the crispy shimeji mushrooms by heating a few centimetres of oil to 180°C
Trim off any discoloured roots at the base of the mushrooms and slice them lengthwise into slices
Mix together the flour, cornflour, salt, baking powder, pepper and paprika with 90ml water to make a smooth batter
Dip the mushrooms into the batter, making sure they’re coated, and allowing any excess batter to drip off
Fry for a couple of minutes or until golden brown all over, then drain on kitchen paper, and repeat with the remaining mushrooms
Cook the pasta in boiling salted water until al dente
Melt the butter in a frying pan and cook the garlic for a couple of minutes, stirring to ensure it doesn’t burn
Add the soy sauce and a ladleful of pasta water to make a silky sauce, then transfer the pasta to the frying pan and mix continuously so that the pasta absorbs some of the sauce and is well coated
Serve the pasta with the crispy mushrooms and scattered with the chives
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