I have a slight obsession with mushrooms and white sauce. (Evident from my mushroom on toast and fynbosh and mushroom recipes.) It pairs so well with some garlic, lemon and rosemary. A classic dish, which I make so often for my girlfriend and me, is basically any pasta with white sauce and mushrooms. Sometimes I add the bacon or pork belly, but more often than not, it remains a white sauce with mushrooms.
This is by far the most-easiest pasta dish to make with some key steps that will give you an ultra-smooth and flavourful sauce.
In this rendition of the very easy recipe, I followed the technique of cooking the mushroom as I illustrated in my manifesto of sorts. I left the mushroom uncut and place it on top of the pasta and I place the pork belly on the side. It is therefore a "deconstructed" dish, one that you will find in fancy restaurants, but with the same ingredients! (And some extra steps to create more flavour.)
So please follow along as I make this very easy dish that you can make for your significant other for that special date! It is almost a foolproof recipe that you can modify to suit your palate!
Recipe/Ingredients List
To make two relatively big portions (we could not eat both portions), I used the following ingredients:
- four or five brown mushrooms,
- 100 grams of pork belly,
- 50 grams of pasta,
- two tbsp of flour,
- one lemon (zest and 1/2 of the juice),
- two tbsp olive oil,
- about 1/4 cup milk, and
- parmesan (hard) cheese.
Method/Process
As with everything in life, this recipe starts with cutting the pork belly into small pieces. I cut them in small but large cubes as they will shrink a little with cooking. The idea is to expose as much of the fat as possible so that you can render it out. With this fat, I cooked the mushrooms, but more on this later.
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As noted, there is quite a lot of fat in pork belly, and if you manage to slowly render out almost all of the fat, you will have some nice oil that you can use for cooking the mushrooms. If it is not enough, you can always add some butter or olive oil.
In my previous post called the manifesto on cooking vegetables like meat, I began scoring my vegetables like my meat and I cooked them in a similar fashion. In the photograph below, you can see how I scored the mushrooms. This will increase the surface area allowing for more flavour.
With the pan still full of the rendered-out lard or pork fat, I began browning and cooking the mushrooms. At first, I browned the tops of the mushrooms.
As they browned nicely, I flipped them over and slowly basted them until they were cooked. I also added some lemon juice at this stage. Cooking the mushrooms like this gives you two things. Firstly, your mushrooms will be cooked in such a way as to enhance the mushroom flavour. Secondly, you will have mushroom-flavoured oil/fat with which you can make your white sauce.
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Making white sauce takes some practice but once you get it, you will always have it. It takes two or three steps to get an incredibly silky smooth white sauce. To add extra flavour, I used half of the mushroom oil I just made, and I added some butter as there was not enough fat.
The first step is to add the flour and stir a bit.
The second step is to add a little bit of milk and stir again.
It will clump up, and at this stage, add more milk. It will clump up again, but less so. Add more milk and stir.
Every time you add the milk, you stir out all of the lumps from forming. And the end result will be a thicker sauce. Right at the end, I added the parmesan and lemon zest. You want to do this when the cause is basically done and the heat is turned off.
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If all goes according to plan, you will have this incredibly smooth sauce, evident from the video below which I took before adding the cheese and lemon zest.
With the sauce done, the mushrooms cooked, and the pork belly also cooked, the pasta also cooked, I assembled the dish.
I cooked the pasta while I made the white sauce. Do not discard the pasta water! You want to add this to the sauce to loosen it up a bit.
At first, the sauce will look "broken" but just keep on stirring. As you stir, the cheese will melt into the sauce and the sauce will become cohesive and smooth again.
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Now it is just plating. I plated the pasta covered in the mushroom-lemon white sauce on the bottom, and I placed one of the mushrooms on the pasta. On the side, I added the pork belly. I also added a sprig of rosemary.
I call it a deconstructed pasta dish because normally you would cut the mushrooms before cooking them. You will also fold into the pasta the cooked mushroom and pork belly. This time around, I placed the pork belly on the side and the uncut whole mushroom on top. It looked really nice, and to my girlfriend, the mushroom looked like a little heart! Mushroom hearts.
In any case, I really hope that you will make this for yourself. It is really easy and even if it takes only a couple of minutes extra to make, it surely is worth it. It is a perfect date night food!
I really hope that you will make this for yourself and your significant other.
Let me know in the comment show it went.
For now, happy cooking and stay healthy.
All of the writings in this post are my own, and also the recipe. The photographs are also my own, taken with my iPhone.