Quick-Hit Pasta Recipe: Asparagus Pasta Salad

Hi! I’m Mac from pasta-recipes-made-easy with another quick hit pasta recipe, this one
pasta salad with asparagus, some dried tomato, fresh mushrooms. We’re going to be
doing seven steps very quick, let’s make it.

Okay step one, we’ve got 100 grams or 3½ ounces of fresh wild mixed mushrooms or
you can just choose one type, use chanterelle or porcini, anything really except for those
kind of nasty button mushrooms. And so what we’re going to do is just chop off the
stalks of these mushrooms and just so you got the heads left and we’re going to get rid of
the dirt as well. You clean the bush of this off and or you can just rinse them under the
tap, whatever you prefer. So you’ve got those already, we’ve also got six or seven
asparagus which is the other main ingredient of this dish and just give this a bend and you
find that there’s a weak point where they snap so that that’s the place and then we’re
going to throw the chunkier parts away and just keep these heads. Thirdly for the
preparation, we’ve got four sun-dried tomatoes from -- and what we’re going to do is just
chop those up and those will go into the dish later on and that’s really it. We’ve washed
mushrooms, snapped the asparagus, chopped the toms, and we’re ready for step two.

Step two, we have placed the asparagus in a shallow frying pan and just enough cold
water in there to cover them. We got that on a hot pot until we get it simmering and
boiling away and we’re just going to boil them in that water, also add a pinch of salt and
we’re going to boil them in there basically until they’re soft enough so that you can just
slide a knife eagerly through the bottom, thickest part of the stem. So just a few minutes
until they soften up and then we’re on to step three.

Step three, while the asparagus is boiling away there, we’ve just taken a second frying
pan, we’ve splashed a good glob of extra virgin olive oil in there and now we’re going to
throw in a peeled garlic clove as well, stick this on a medium heat hob and you have an
option as well, you can also throw in a just few, a small handful of rinsed fresh parsley
leaves, flat parsley leaves which will give this a nice extra flavor. We’re just going to fry
up this garlic clove until it starts to turn golden.

Step four, as you can see we’ve taken the asparagus away because that’s softened up so
we’ve taken that out off the heat in the mean time, our garlic’s started to brown a little bit
so what we’re going to do is throw in the mushrooms now at this stage -- on a nice quite
of lively heat and we’ll basically going to fry these, stirring them regularly until they
shrink to about half the size and so they really wilt and get cooked very nicely.

Step five, when the mushroom is just frying away and gradually softening, we’ve got a
pan of pasta water here just broths to boil so we’re going to throw in a bit of salt which is
about a tablespoon and where just going to wraps to that the penne pasta which is 200
grams or roughly seven ounces. Give that a good stir, bring that to a boil again and then
cook exactly as its package suggest which in this case, is 11 minutes.

Step 6, you can see the mushrooms are nicely wilted and softened there so we’ve taken
the heat off that so it’s just going to cool down. In the meantime we’re just going to chop
up the asparagus which we softened earlier and then when that’s just very pretty brawly
roughly chop we’re going to throw that into the pan with the mushrooms, don’t worry
about the sound the heat’s just cooling down and we’re going to also add our chopped
sun-dried tomatoes give that a nice stir and then that’ll cool down just while the pasta
cooks.

Finally, step seven we’ve got a pasta finished there which we drained we’re just going to
take the garlic out of the mixture although you can leave that in if you prefer. We’ve got
our pasta which is cooked, drained and is just being cooled a little under a bit of cold
water, just rinsed into cold water. We’re going to have the final glob of extra virgin and
then we’re just going to garnish this with a few extra parsley leaves, give it all a great big
stir and here we have it, we’re just going to -- you can actually serve this from warm but
for other pastas really, give it about 10 minutes to cool down and look at that, lovely
asparagus and fresh mushroom pasta salad, delicious.