Erica De Mane

Recipe: Farfalle with Morels, Asparagus, Shallots, and Chervil

No doubt about it, pasta with morels and asparagus is a springtime classic. The little touches you give it are what make it your own. My way (at least my way last night) is to include shallots, fresh garlic, thyme, white wine, crème fraîche and chervil. This is a gentle dish, no sharp edges, no hits of salt or hot spice. It’s what I would call soothing. It’s got to be gentle, because I don’t want to mask the tastes of my two very special main ingredients.

Morels have a unique flavor. At their best I’d say they’re earthy and deep, but if they’re waterlogged, they can taste like mold and have a slimy texture, so if you’re buying them from a shop, make sure they’re neither dead dry nor soaked. Springy is a word that comes to mind. Smell them, too. If they smell like a lovely mushroom, they’ll cook up tasting the same. I once found what I thought was a little cluster of morels on my friend Tobias’s property in upstate New York. They tend to pop up in the spring in moist areas and usually under dying elm trees (that’s so morbidly romantic). The ones I saw looked just like morels, but to be sure I checked my little pocket mushroom book and learned there is such a thing as a false morel, a mushroom you don’t want to be eating. Since I didn’t feel like finding out what I was dealing with by cooking them up and actually swallowing them, I decided to let them be. Just as well, I guess.

I don’t often cook farfalle (Italian for “butterfly”). That pasta shape always seems gimmicky to me, like those terrible wagon wheels my mother always cooked when we were kids. Farfalle is pretty, but a plate of it tossed with sauce can easily look like a cluttered mess. The way around this, to maintain farfalle’s loveliness, is to cut all the sauce ingredients in long slivers, so you don’t get clunky chunks competing with the decoratively shaped pasta.

It also can be a little tricky to cook correctly. It’s very important to buy a good artisanal brand of farfalle. Mass-produced ones like Buitoni are tight, compact, and force-dried, so their pinched-closed center tends to stay hard while the wings, I suppose you could call them, go beyond al dente toward flabby. You want a pasta that breathes, one that’s made with care. I chose Benedetto Cavalieri, an old, artisanal company from Puglia that still does it right. Another good choice with this sauce would be a fresh egg pasta such as tagliatelle.

Farfalle with Morels, Asparagus, Shallots, and Chervil

(Serves 2 as a main course)

Salt
12 thick asparagus stalks, trimmed
½ pound farfalle pasta
Extra-virgin olive oil
1 large shallot, very thinly sliced
1 large fresh garlic clove, thinly sliced
About 10 thyme sprigs, the leaves lightly chopped
About 10 to 15 morels (depending on their size), cut into slices lengthwise
Freshly ground black pepper
A splash of dry white wine
¼ cup chicken broth
1 heaping tablespoon crème fraîche
A handful of chervil, lightly stemmed
Grana Padano cheese for grating

Bring a pot of pasta cooking water to a boil. Add a generous amount of salt. Add the asparagus, and blanch it for a minute. Lift it from the water with a large strainer into a colander. Run it under cold water to bring up its color. Dry it well, and slice the stalks thinly on an angle.

Drop the farfalle into the boiling water, and give it a stir.

In a large skillet, heat two tablespoons of olive oil over medium heat. When hot, add the shallot, and sauté for about a minute. Then add the garlic, thyme, morels, and asparagus. Season with salt and black pepper, and sauté until the morels are just tender, about 4 minutes. Add the splash of white wine, and let it boil away. Add the chicken broth, and let simmer for a few seconds.

When the farfalle is al dente, drain it, and add it to the skillet. Toss gently over low heat for about 30 seconds. Turn off the heat, and add the crème fraîche, tossing gently. Taste for seasoning.

Divide the pasta up into two bowls. Garnish with a little grated grana Padano and then the chervil, bringing the remaining cheese to the table if you’d like a little more.