Mark Murphy's creamy brown butter mushroom pasta: Today

Ingredients

Serves 4

• 250g tagliatelle
• 50g butter
• 250g mushrooms, chopped or sliced into small pieces (chestnut mushrooms if you can get them)
• 3-4 thyme sprigs
• 2-3 tbsp. crème fraiche
• salt and pepper

For the breadcrumb topping (optional)

• knob of butter
• 1 clove garlic, crushed
• 150g breadcrumbs
• handful of flat leaf parsley, chopped

To finish

• hard cheese (Coolea), grated

Method

1. Cook the pasta in boiling salted water (have a look at the packet to help determine the cooking time, different pastas may have a different cooking time). Drain the pasta and keep a little pasta water.
2. While the pasta is cooking, heat a wide bottom pan over medium heat, add some butter and allow it to foam but not burn.
3. Add the mushrooms, remove the leaves from thyme and add to the pan. Turn up the heat and allow the mushrooms to take on some colour.
4. Cook for a further 3 minutes or so. Then add the crème fraiche, stir and cook for about 2 minutes, add in a dash of pasta water.
5. If you are adding the breadcrumb topping, heat a small pan, add the butter and garlic cook for a minute or so and add the breadcrumbs and chopped parsley. Cook for 2-3 minutes.
6. In a large bowl, add the pasta, mushrooms and, add in most of the breadcrumbs mix it altogether, taste and season.
7. Divide this between 4 bowls, sprinkle the remaining breadcrumbs over each bowl and add some grated cheese.