We’d wanted to make a version of this recipe for what may have been several years, but we hadn’t. It seemed too rich, too much cream, too many mushrooms –well, not really — but it did seem as if it would make a dish so rich in heavy cream that our arteries might harden just looking at it. Well, we went for it, and made it, anyway, and now you can try it, too.
This is a variation of Thomas Keller’s Beef Stroganoff recipe in his book Ad Hoc at Home. We might not have made it lighter, but we did make it with portobello mushrooms in place of the braised beef short ribs, which turns a two-day recipe into something you can make in an afternoon (if you’re including the homemade pappardelle, which we are). We did cut this recipe in half so we’d have just two servings, and we used white mushrooms instead of the recommended cremini mushrooms (they’re really the same type of mushroom; they’re just white, instead of brown).
Portobello Stroganoff
Ingredients
For the cream sauce
- 1/2 Tbs unsalted butter
- 1/3 cup chopped onion
- Kosher salt
- Freshly ground black pepper
- 1/2 pound mushrooms chopped finely
- 1/2 bay leaf
- 10 black peppercorns
- 1 1/2 cups heavy cream
- 1/4 tsp dried thyme
- 2 1/2 Tbs crème fraîche (see note)
For the mushrooms
- 2 Tbs unsalted butter
- 1 Tbs canola oil
- 1/2 pound small mushrooms sliced
- Kosher salt
- Freshly ground black pepper
- 2 portobello caps sliced and gills removed
For completion
- 1 batch 8 ounces papperdelle
- 1 Tbs unsalted butter room temperature
- Coarsely chopped flat-leaved parsley
- Gray salt or coarse sea salt
Instructions
For the cream
- Melt the butter in a large saucepan over medium heat. Add onions and cook until tender, about 5 minutes. Season with salt and pepper and add the mushrooms, increasing the heat to medium-high. Cook, stirring occasionally, until almost all liquid has evaporated, about 15 minutes.
- Make a sachet from the bay leaf and peppercorns.
- Add heavy cream, sachet, and dried thyme, and bring to a boil. Reduce heat and simmer until reduced by about one-third, 35 minutes.
- When sauce is ready, discard sachet, transfer cream to a blender and blend smooth, return to saucepan and keep warm. Stir in crème fraîche.
For the mushrooms
- Preheat oven to 200°F.
- While the sauce is simmering, melt butter in the oil in a large skillet over medium heat. When melted, add sliced mushrooms, sprinkle with salt and pepper, and fry until golden. Transfer to a plate lined with paper towels to drain. Place in oven to keep warm.
- Add portobello slices to the skillet, season with salt and pepper, and fry, turning as needed, until golden. Transfer to a plate lined with paper towels to drain. Place in oven to keep warm.
For completion
- Bring a large kettle of salted water to a boil and cook pasta according to directions, or until tender, if using homemade pasta. Reserve 1 cup pasta water, then drain thoroughly and toss with butter.
- Add pasta to the sauce along with 3/4 of the sliced mushrooms and stir to coat. If the sauce is too thick, thin by adding some pasta water and stirring to combine.
- Divide among warmed bowls, topping with remaining mushrooms and portobello slices.
- Garnish with flat-leaved parsley and salt.
Notes
Ingredient discussion:
If you’re going to make your own pasta, we suggest using our basic pasta dough. It always works. Roll it out into thin sheets and cut into 1/2-inch-wide strips: pappardelle. For the heavy cream, we suggest using organic cream, as it doesn’t contain anything but cream (full disclosure: we used an ordinary store-brand cream, but we really prefer to use organic when we can). For the crème fraîche, remember that this is nothing other than sour cream you make yourself; you can see how right here, although you do need to start it the day before use.
Procedure in detail:
For the cream sauce:
Fry onions and mushrooms. Melt butter in a large saucepan over medium heat. When melted and foamy, add onions and fry, stirring occasionally, until tender, about 5 minutes. Season with salt and pepper. Right now, go light on seasoning because we’ll add more as we go along, and you can’t remove salt and pepper once they’ve been added. Stir in mushroom pieces, increase heat to medium high, and fry mushrooms pieces until they release their liquid and all the liquid evaporates, about 15 minutes.
Make sachet. We use a disposable coffee filter for this, but a piece of fine cheesecloth will work, too. Place the bay leaf and peppercorns in a small piece of cloth and tie closed. If you’re using a coffee filter, as we did, you can fold it up and staple it closed. Basically, you want some easy way of retrieving the peppercorns and bay leaf later.
Add cream and simmer. Stir the cream into the mushrooms, add the sachet and thyme and bring everything to a simmer. Once simmering, reduce the heat and continue simmering until the cream mixture is infused with mushroom flavor and reduced by about one-third. While the cream is simmering, you can be frying the remaining mushrooms, as described below.
Blend. Once the sauce is reduced, transfer to a blender and blend until smooth. Return to the saucepan and keep warm. Stir in the crème fraîche.
For the mushrooms:
Preheat oven to 200°F. We want to keep the mushrooms warm after frying them, so we’ll place them in the oven on a very low heat. They won’t be in there long enough to dry out, but they’ll stay warm. You can also place the serving bowls in the oven to warm.
Fry mushroom slices. Melt the butter in canola oil in a large skillet over medium heat. When melted and hot, add the sliced mushrooms in a single layer and let fry, without stirring, for about 3 minutes, or until golden brown. If, as ours did, the mushrooms release a lot of liquid, don’t panic; just keep cooking without stirring until the liquid evaporates and the mushrooms begin to turn golden, then stir to flip, and fry the other side for another couple of minutes. Season with salt and pepper. Use a slotted spoon to transfer to a plate lined with paper towels to drain, and keep warm in the oven.
Fry portobello slices. You’ll probably have enough oil and butter left in the pan to fry the portobello slices, but, if not, add a bit more butter and oil, place the slices in a single layer, and let fry for a couple of minutes. Turn so another side fries, and continue turning and frying until all sides are browned. Sprinkle with salt and pepper, transfer to another plate lined with paper towels, and place in the oven to keep warm.
For completion:
Boil and drain pasta. Bring a large kettle of salted water to a boil, add the pasta, and cook according to the package directions. If you made fresh pasta, start testing the pasta to see if it’s done after a couple of minutes. Once done, scoop out about a cup of the pasta water and reserve, drain the pasta, and toss with butter.
Combine sauce, pasta, and mushrooms. Add the pasta to the sauce and toss to coat. At the same time, add about 3/4 of the small fried mushrooms to the sauce. If the sauce is very thick, add some of the reserved pasta water to thin, as needed. Taste and add salt and pepper as needed.
Serve. Divide the pasta and sauce between the warmed bowls, and top with the remaining sliced mushrooms and portobello slices. Garnish with parsley, if using, and sprinkle with a bit of coarse sea salt. Serve immediately.
Wow! This stroganoff is really, really rich, probably the richest, creamiest dish we’ve had all year. We had to eat lighter meals the next day to compensate, so we recommend that you save this recipe for something special. It’s worth it, and you really don’t want to consider this to be an ordinary meal. Five creamy stars.
