Roasted garlic and creme fraiche spaghetti

Roasted garlic and creme fraiche spaghetti

I've been working late a lot recently and so my lovely husband has been taking on more of the cooking.  The other day he made a particularly lovely pasta dish involving roasted garlic, creme fraiche, mushrooms, mangetout and spaghetti.  Mmmm.

To make it, he first of all roasted the garlic, which takes around an hour so worth bearing that in mind if you're really hungry!

Roasted garlic and creme fraiche spaghetti

There are a number of ways to roast garlic but he went for the method described here (the bottom of the page, "roasting garlic for cooking purposes") which seemed to produce some pretty tasty roasted garlic. 

Then, he fried up the vegetables - an onion, a selection of mushrooms and some mangetout (though, really, any vegetables would work) - added a good slug of white wine, cooked for a while longer to let that reduce, stirred in the creme fraiche, left it to heat through, then added the roasted garlic and the spaghetti. 

 

Roasted garlic and creme fraiche spaghetti

We decided to pack up the left overs for lunches during the week but, if you wanted to, I bet it would make for a lovely frittata di spaghetti.  That's the Italian way of using up left over spaghetti which - like much Italian cooking - is straightforward but very very good.  All you do is grease a pan (olive oil/butter/as you wish), put the spaghetti in it, crack a couple of eggs in (more if you have loads of left over spaghetti, obviously) and then cook.  Particularly good with a little cheese on top. 

Mushroom stroganoff

Stroganoff and rice

I make absolutely no claims for the authenticity of this dish, I only have the haziest of ideas of what the defining characteristics of stroganoff actually are but it is quick and tasty and involves mushrooms and mustard. That's generally good enough for me.

Chopped onion and mushrooms

Mmm, mushrooms

Mushrooms cooking

Fry 500g of mushrooms and an onion in olive oil (or butter) for around 10-15 minutes, add a dash of sherry, 300ml of crème fraiche, mustard to taste (I go for about three teaspoons of seedy mustard but I love my mustard!), salt, pepper and paprika. Fresh chopped parsley on top is good if you have it. Serve with rice.

Almost ready stroganoff

Mushrooms stuffed with stilton and garlicky breadcrumbs

Mushrooms ready for stuffing

For some reason, this past month has been the month of the mushroom in our house. I seem to have cooked a lot of mushroom dishes. For instance, recently, I tried to recreate the mushrooms stuffed with stilton that we had atThe Vaults a little while ago.

I took 14 small mushrooms, took out the stalks and put them into a buttered oven dish. Then scattered 250g of stilton, the sliced mushroom stalks (waste not, want not!), 300g of crème fraiche on top, in that order.

With added stilton

Mmmm, stilton

With mushroom stalks added on top

With creme fraiche added on top

Musing on what I thought was missing from The Vaults' version, I realised that it was the obvious: garlic! So, I crushed in three cloves of garlic into two slices of bread's worth of breadcrumbs along with olive oil, salt and black pepper. 

The missing ingredient!

Breadcrumbs tossed in olive oil, salt, pepper and garlic

Having sprinkled the mushrooms with the breadcrumbs, I then baked at 180 degrees for 25 minutes. 

The finished product

Verdict: tasty but some of the mushrooms were a little undercooked. I think, next time, I'd be tempted to roast them on their own for 10 minutes or so before adding the crème fraiche and breadcrumbs and baking for a further 25 mins or so. I think, also, it would have helped to have melted the stilton into the crème fraiche as then that element would have been hot before it went into the oven.

One to experiment with more another time.