Pasta Marsala (Italian-American Mushrooms, Cream and Wine)

Marsala sauce is a rich sauce made with Marsala wine as a key ingredient. The sauce is used to enhance the flavour of pasta, poultry, pork, veal, fish and game. It can be made from a variety of flavoured bases, such as tomato, mushroom, or fruit flavours and it is served as a sauce for several traditional food dishes, such as pollo (chicken) marsala or veal marsala. When making the sauce, the wine can be added to the other ingredients immediately or, as preferred by many, added at the end of the sauce making process. This sauce works well for tagliatelle, papparedelle or other thick pastas.

Pasta:
1 lb pasta (tagliatelle, papparedelle or other thick pasta)
4 Tbsp. sea salt

Sauce:
3 Tbsp. olive oil
¼ cup onion, diced
4 cloves garlic, chopped
1 lb crimini mushrooms, de-stemmed and sliced
sea salt
black pepper, freshly cracked
1 cup dry Marsala wine
½ cup heavy cream
4 sprigs fresh thyme

Garnish:
Parmesan cheese, grated
sprigs thyme
1 lemon, freshly juiced (optional)

Place a pot of water on the stove and bring to a boil. When it boils, add salt, wait for it to come back to boil and then add pasta and cook to “al dente” (about 1-2 minutes less than the package directs.

Place the olive oil in a large, heavy skillet over medium heat. Add the shallots and cook for 2-3 minutes, stirring constantly to prevent them from burning. Add the mushrooms and 1 tsp, of the salt. Sauté, stirring occasionally, until all the moisture has evaporated and the mushrooms have cooked down, about 5-8 minutes.

Turn heat up to medium-high and add the thyme sprigs to the skillet if using. Add the Marsala and continue cooking until almost all the wine has evaporated, about 5 minutes.

Once the Marsala mixture has cooked down, pull out the thyme sprigs and set aside.

At this stage you could add your cooked, drained pasta and then add the Parmesan cheese and heavy cream and mix until incorporated and heated through.

Season the pasta with freshly ground pepper and salt to taste.

Distribute pasta into dishes and garnish with additional parmesan cheese and the thyme sprigs.

Before serving, I like to brighten up olive oil- or cream-based pasta dishes with a squeeze of fresh lemon, but this is completely optional.

Makes 4-6 servings.