Wednesday, June 4, 2025

Fumbling Toward Culinary Talent: Modified Pasta alla Zozzona with Mushrooms


This recipe is a modification of the "Dumbed-Down Pasta alla Zozzona" I made recently. 

I cut the bacon and added garlic and mushrooms. 

Ingredients
1 lb. of Italian sausage
1 medium yellow onion, diced
2 egg yolks
1 egg
1/2 cup of Parmesan-Romano cheese
A healthy amount of cracked black pepper
3 cloves of garlic, minced
2 bay leaves
1 package of fresh mushrooms, sliced
1 teaspoon of red pepper flakes
1/2 cup of dry white wine (I used a Chardonnay)
1 bottle of pasatta (I used the Rutti brand)
1 lb. of penne pasta (use the tubular pasta of your choice)

Process
I used a Dutch oven for this dish, but if you have a very large saute pan, that will work too. 

I cooked the pasta and then drained it while doing this. Reserve some pasta water in case you need to thin out the sauce a bit. 

Set to medium heat, add a little extra virgin olive oil, add in the onion and bay leaves, cook the onion for roughly ten minutes, and add in the sausage. Cook the sausage thoroughly. I broke up the sausage with potato masher and mixed the sausage and onion together.  

Add the wine, set to high to burn off the alcohol, then move the heat to just under medium heat 

Add in the garlic and pepper flakes and cook for a minute or two. Take out the bay leaves and add the sliced mushrooms. 

Add in the passata and do a low-key simmer for approximately 15 minutes. 

Combine the egg yolks, egg, cheese, and a ton of freshly cracked black pepper. Mix thoroughly. 

Add the pasta into the Dutch oven. Thoroughly mix it in and cook for approximately 5-10 minutes. 

Taste to see if you need to add salt and pepper (I added a little of each). 

Take the Dutch oven off the heat and mix in the egg-cheese mixture. Serve. 

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