Boscaiola Pasta – Chef Daniel

by | Healthy Eating

pasta
A beautiful Pasta Boscaiola, is bacony, it’s mushroomy and it’s creamy. It is everything you want in a good pasta. 

Hey everyone, welcome back to “Chef Daniel’s World’s Famous Backyard Kitchen.” I’m gonna show you how to cook my favourite pasta, a Pasta Boscaiola, right. Which is my absolute favourite pasta in the world. It’s bacony, it’s mushroomy, it’s creamy, it’s everything I want in a good pasta. 

What are we gonna have to do first of all, is get this frying pan cracker hot. Because getting that pan nice and hot means it’s gonna hurry up and cook for you! And you’re going to get the wonderful flavour out of the bacon. 

First we need olive oil. Sprinkle a little bit of olive oil into your frying pan. Before anything, add the bacon. We want to add the bacon in there, because we really want that bacon to fry and cook. Separate it around and then leave it, let it sit. This will rip the the flavour straight out of the bacon. And all this flavour is going to get into your Boscaiola sauce. This therefore means it’s gonna end up in the pasta. And it’s gonna end up in your belly. Which is going to taste really, really good. 

Next we will need garlic and onion. Throw that in. I got some beautiful fresh thyme. We’re gonna throw that in there as well. Give it a good stir. Get that garlic, onion and thyme and bacon, all completely around the pan and just leave it. Let it cook, let it do its thing. Let the flavours come out naturally. You don’t have to keep on playing with it. You don’t have to keep on stirring it. Therefore just leave it alone. 

We’ve got our pasta over here, it’s already cooked. it’s beautiful and ready to go. That pasta is nice and done. Now, we’re gonna get our mushrooms, then throw them in there. You can hear this happy sounds of bacon, it’s the popping of bacon. We love it. 

Next we’re gonna throw in some cream and give that a bit of a stir. Bring everything up to a boil. Now the secret of my Boscaiola is at this point here, we’re gonna get that cream boiling up. As a result, we’re gonna get that mushrooms cooking into the sauce, we’ve got that bacon, we’ve got the garlic with the onion. And we’ve also got the thyme all kind of infusing into that sauce beautifully. This will make the Boscaiola flavourful.

But before it gets fully reduced, we wanna grab our pasta, which is cooked perfectly till al dente, and we’re gonna throw that into our sauce. Straight out of that pasta water, straight into the sauce. Once in the pan, give it a bit of a toss. Really kinda getting into the sauce, slightly helping that sauce thicken a touch, because as that happens, the sauce is gonna infuse into the pasta, and it’s going to give you a much better flavoured pasta. 

At this point now, we’re gonna add salt. Then we’re gonna add pepper. And then, my favourite part, patience. Just leave it, let it boil. Don’t play with it, don’t move it. Let the heat do its thing. Right? You can see it all boiling beautifully. If you’re a little bit worried, give it a bit of a stir. Otherwise, leave it alone. 

If you want, get your stuff moved, get your chopping board nice and clean. Give it a quick wipe down. Just occupy yourself. Don’t stir the pasta, leave it alone. Let it boil naturally. Now, we get our microplane, then get the Parmesan cheese, and we get ready. 

Try and buy your Parmesan in blocks, because they taste better. So, our pasta’s almost there. We’ll give it a quick stir. Now look at that, you can see that beautiful. Stirring it up it’s all gorgeously coated with that wonderful pasta. 

If you find it a little bit too thick, all you’ve simply got to do, is come back over to your pasta, your pasta water, grab some of that water. And throw it in there because what happens is that pasta’s absorbing all that flavour. So if you wanna make it a little bit more liquidy, a little bit more saucy. Just like this, right. It’s totally fine, add a little bit of that pasta water. It kinda acts as stock. So now we’re gonna grab our pasta. Twist it around, put it in our plate. 

Now I did mention to you before, this is my favourite pasta dish. So I’m gonna give my kinda serve. And now we got our pasta there. We got our wonderful Parmesan cheese. Throw that on top, and now you’ve got a absolutely gorgeous Fettuccine Boscaiola, done my way. Good amount of Parmesan cheese. I’ve gotta go eat this. I’ll see you guys later.