Erica De Mane

Recipe: Parisian Tagliatelle with Girolles, Leeks, and Butter Broth

I just got back from a vacation in Paris with my husband and his pushing-90 parents. Now, you might say this wouldn’t  be your idea of a vacation, and it could possibly even be considered a bit masochistic. In theory I suppose it’s true that shuffling around beautiful Paris with two slow as they come, deaf oldsters could be a tad frustrating and not high on romance, and you’d be right, except that my in-laws are cheerful, up for anything, and oddly had more staying power than I did on some days. Pretty remarkable.

We rented a big apartment in the 10th, in a largely Arab and African neighborhood filled with wig shops and garish, cut-rate bridal gown stores. Women sold grilled corn and men sold counterfeit cigarettes by the Metro entrance, and there was a fabulous outdoor market with tons of head-on fish, loose spices, and bins of girolle mushrooms, which are now in season. The price of the mushrooms was so low compared with New York that I knew I needed to buy a large bag, take them back to our little Paris kitchen, and do something French with them.

Girolles are the mushrooms we know in the U.S. as chanterelles, the golden, trumpet shaped ones that some people say have an aroma of apricots, though I don’t get that from them. To me they smell like sweet, wet soil in the most wonderful way. Chanterelle nomenclature is a bit confusing in France. If you look up girolle here, it translates as chanterelle, but in France a chanterelle is not the golden mushroom we’re all familiar with—that’s the girolle—but a similarly shaped, though skinnier, dark gray mushroom. That’s what is called chanterelle in French markets, and it costs about six times as much as the girolle, more like what the golden ones cost in Manhattan, so I passed it by, being perfectly happy to purchase a huge bag of girolles for what I considered a song (and to me they are still chanterelles, no matter what anyone over there says).

Here’s the true French chanterelle, sometimes called chanterelle grise.

I decided to  make a French-inspired pasta, so I picked up some homemade tagliatelle, Breton butter, a chunk of Comte cheese, and a handful of leeks, parsley, and thyme, and headed back to our place to cook up a pasta that was rich but not terribly rich, not the way the cooks in Paris, in my opinion, sometimes screw up pasta by adding tons of cream and four different gooey cheeses. What I did was make a butter-based broth with all the girolle and leek trimmings and add it to the dish at the last minute for a slightly slippery, buttery effect, but still light on the palate. The girolles, or whatever they were, were fabulously flavorful. Boy, I wish they were as cheap in New York.

Parisian Tagliatelle with Girolles, Leeks, and Butter Broth

(Serves 2)

3 tablespoons unsalted butter
½ pound golden chanterelles, trimmed and cut in half lenghtwise if large (and make sure to save all the trimmings)
2 medium leeks, well cleaned, trimmed down to the tender white part and cut into thin rounds (and again, save all the trimmings)
1½ cups light chicken broth
Salt
½ pound fresh tagliatelle
2 small garlic cloves, thinly sliced
Extra-virgin olive oil
Freshly ground black pepper
¼ cup fruity white wine
5 large thyme sprigs
A small handful of flat-leaf parsley leaves, lightly chopped
A small chunk of Comte cheese

In a small saucepan, heat the butter over medium flame. Add all the mushroom and leek trimmings, and sauté until soft and fragrant, about 4 minutes. Add the chicken broth, and simmer until it’s reduced by about half (you should wind up with about ½ cup or so). This should take about 5 minutes. Taste for seasoning, adding a little salt if needed. The broth should look a bit creamy. Strain it into a small bowl.

Set up a pot of pasta cooking water, and bring it to a boil. Add a generous amount of salt.

In a large skillet, heat 2 tablespoons of olive oil over a medium flame. Add the leeks, and let them soften for a minute. Add the mushrooms, seasoning with salt and black pepper, and sauté until fragrant, about another 4 minutes.

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

Add the white wine to the mushrooms, and let it boil away. Add the mushroom broth and the thyme, and let simmer while the pasta is cooking.

When the tagliatelle is just tender, usually after about 3 or 4 minutes for fresh pasta, drain it, and pour it into a warmed serving bowl. Add a drizzle of olive oil, and give it a quick toss. Add the mushrooms with all their broth, a few gratings of fresh black pepper, and a heaping tablespoon of grated Comte. Add the parsley, and toss everything gently. Check for seasoning, adding more salt if needed. Serve right away, adding more Comte to each serving if you like.