Agnolotti with crispy mushrooms and spinach pesto
A fresh, multi-textured, farmer's market-inspired meal!
Agnolotti with crispy mushrooms and spinach pesto
Time: 30 min | Difficulty: 1/5 | Recommendation: Quick lunch or weeknight dinner
This dish is made up of ingredients you can find at the farmers market, and it’s full of flavor and texture—the mushrooms are crispy and buttery, the pasta is smooth and meaty, the cheese adds creaminess, and the spinach pesto brightens it all up. I used agnolotti al brasato, a meat-filled little pasta pocket, but any tiny pasta pocket will do, like tortellini or a small ravioli. You can also use any type of mushrooms—I recommend using more than one, and combining a heartier mushroom like a portobello, crimini, or white button mushroom, with a fancy, lacier one like an oyster or a maitake. If you do combine them, cook out the moisture from the heftier mushrooms first, before adding the fancy ones, so they all achieve the same level of crispy goodness.
Ingredients
Agnolotti al brasato (or another small pasta pocket)
Butter, olive oil
Small portobello mushrooms (or criminis, white)
Yellow oyster mushrooms (or oyster, maitake, shitake)
Mozzarella, or another farmers market cheese
Parmesan
Spinach pesto (find the recipe here)
Method:
Boil water for the pasta. Salt it well! Add pasta when the water is ready.
Chop mushrooms (or pull them apart if using oysters, maitakes, or another lacy mushroom).
Add butter and a bit of olive oil to a pan, heat it, and add the portobellos. Let them sauté until they’ve released a lot of their moisture, then add in the oyster mushrooms. Coat them in the butter and let them sit in the pan before moving too much—you want them to really get crispy!
Add salt and pepper when the mushrooms are nice and crisped, and let them sit in the pan, flame off, until the pasta is ready.
Layer up! Pasta first with a little bit of butter, then drizzles of pesto, then the mushrooms, then bits of mozzarella, then grated parmesan to top it off.
Looking for that pesto recipe? Find it here: