Food You Can Eat: Rigatoni in a Mushroom Sauce: Two Versions

Here are two takes on what is a delicious recipe. Why not just one? Because I, like any good host, am sensitive to food aversions my guests might have. Once I had people over and one of the couples didn’t like alcohol in their food but were not vegetarians. Once I had people over who were vegetarian but didn’t mind alcohol in their food. Both of these recipes serve 6. Let’s start with the abstemious carnivores first.

Rigatoni in a Creamy Sausage and Mushroom Sauce

1 lb. spicy Italian sausage links, casings removed and crumbled

1 tbsp. butter

1 lb. sliced mushrooms, like cremini. These are often sold presliced in bags but do it yourself.

4 garlic cloves, minced

A little salt (the sausage really should be salty enough)

A little pepper (again, the sausage will have pepper in it)

2 cups heavy cream

1 lb. rigatoni

As much freshly grated or shaved parmesan or Romano cheese as your heart desires

Start boiling the water for the rigatoni. In a large skillet cook the crumbled sausage over medium heat for 5 minutes or so, so that the sausage is browned and pretty much cooked. Drain the skillet and move the sausage into a bowl and let it hang out.

If the water is done by now, add the rigatoni. If not, hang on for a minute…

In that same skillet melt the butter over medium heat and add the mushrooms and garlic and shake in a little salt and pepper if you want. Cover it and cook for 4 minutes, stirring so that stuff doesn’t start sticking to the bottom, then uncover and cook for 3 more minutes, still stirring. The liquid should cook off during this stage.

Water boiling yet? Add the rigatoni.

Add the cream to the skillet and bring to a boil. Reduce the heat and cook uncovered for a few minutes until the sauce thickens. Add the sausage and stir all this around so the sausage heats up and maybe cooks a little more.

Drain the pasta. Take the sauce off the heat and let it sit for about 5 minutes so it thickens a little more. Coat the rigatoni well and with any luck some of the pasta tubes will fill with some of the sausage/mushroom goodness. Spoon on the grated cheese. 

For the Vegetarians

You do pretty much the same thing but you have to make up for the lack of sausages so…

Boil the water for the rigatoni. In a skillet heat 4 tbsp. of butter (not 1) and 2 tbsp. olive oil over medium high. Add the mushrooms (1 lb., sliced) and the garlic (4 cloves, minced) as above, but you have to be extra vigilant about stirring because you have so much butter and that likes to burn. It shouldn’t because mushrooms throw off a lot of moisture when they’re cooking like this.

Now add 1 cup of dry white wine and simmer until it reduces by about 1/2. Now add 1 cup vegetable stock and simmer until again you get a reduction by 1/2. 

I have never done this but my guess is you could avoid the wine (if you are a wine-eschewing vegetarian) by maybe adding 3/4 cup vegetable stock, let it reduce, then another 3/4 cup, and let it reduce. I would do this in two stages and use less than 2 cups liquid total because the reduction will go quicker and the point is to intensify the sauce, not make vegetable soup out of it. 

One further note: You have to check the contents of the vegetable stock closely, because, like so many counter-intuitive supermarket items, not all vegetable stock is entirely vegetarian. But you probably already know this.

Now add 1 cup heavy cream (not 2) and some freshly grated parmesan or Romano cheese here, rather than waiting until the very end. You don’t need much cheese, maybe 1 oz. or 2. You might think, “oh hell no, I’m going to add ALL the cheese” but don’t, not here, because it won’t “saucify” the way you want. Add the cream and the cheese slowly, stir stir stir, and simmer for about 3 minutes and you’ll see the sauce form its own beautiful oneness.

At this point you might want to add some crunch. If you have any chives or scallions you can dice them and throw them in, or maybe some diced walnuts. I’ve mentioned before that it’s my observation that Italians use more walnuts than we do, so if you have no allergies you can often enhance a sauce by sneaking in a few walnuts. Chives, scallions, walnuts, whatever, use a small handful, so maybe 3 or 4 tbsp. (4 tbsp. = 1/4 cup if you want to measure that way, rather than imagine my large hands and doing your own calculus.) Stir this a little but only for about 1 minute, and here I would salt and pepper; again, lack of the spicy sausage.

You have boiled and drained the pasta, so let the sauce sit for a couple of minutes to calm down, coat the pasta, sprinkle on more grated/shaved cheese if you want, and buon appetito!