What’s cooking today: Creamy tagliatelle with chorizo and mushrooms

Tagliatelle is the best of the long pasta types for my money. It twirls effortlessly on the fork and takes up a lovely creamy sauce with aplomb. It’s broader than its closest cousin, fettuccine, while its cousin-once-removed, linguine, has its own charms. But tagliatelle is the one for me.

I concocted a creamy sauce of button mushrooms and the said chorizo. You can choose any chorizo you like or even slices of a cheese griller.

(Serves 2)

Ingredients

1 medium onion, chopped

2 garlic cloves, finely chopped

A glug of olive oil

A glass of dry white wine

250 g beechwood smoked bacon chorizo, or similar

250 g button mushrooms, sliced

250 ml cream

A ladleful of pasta water

Maldon sea salt to taste

Black pepper to taste

Parsley

Grana Padano

Method

Sauté the onion with the garlic in olive oil on a low heat until softened.

Add the chorizo (sliced on the diagonal) and cook, stirring, for 3 or 4 minutes.

Add the wine and cook it down by half, then add the sliced mushrooms and cook, stirring now and then, until the mushrooms have released their juices and they have cooked away by half.

Season with salt and pepper and pour in the cream.

Return the sauce to a simmer and cook gently until the sauce thickens. There’s no need for cornflour or other thickeners; the cream will thicken with slow, careful reduction.

Cook the tagliatelle until it’s al dente and drain in a colander, reserving a ladleful of the pasta water.

Pour the pasta from the colander back into the pasta pot along with the reserved pasta water. Add the sauce and toss with a pasta spoon or two wooden spoons until all the pasta is coated.

Sprinkle with chopped parsley and grate Grana Padano over, or another hard cheese. DM/TGIFood

Follow Tony Jackman on Instagram @tony_jackman_cooks.

This dish is photographed in a risotto bowl by Mervyn Gers Ceramics.