Slow-cooked Mushroom Ragù
Mushroom Ragù - a vegan ragù with a rich sauce made from caramelised onions, slow cooked mushrooms, tinned cherry tomatoes and the gentle heat from a chipotle chilli.
Ingredients
- 1 dried chipotle chilli
- 30 g dried porcini mushrooms
- 500 g onions
- 500 ml extra virgin olive oil
- 250 g chestnut mushrooms
- 250 g oyster mushrooms
- 250 g portobello mushrooms
- 100 ml red wine
- 2 tbsp tomato paste
- 10 garlic cloves
- 10 g thyme
- 500 ml veg stock
- 2 bay leaves
- 2 400 g tins of cherry tomatoes
- 30 g parsley
- 600 g dried fettuccine (or papadelle)
Instructions
- Trim the woody end of the chipotle chilli and discard. Add the chilli and the dried porcini to a bowl and cover with 250 ml boiling water. Leave to soak for at least 20 minutes.
- Pre-heat the oven to 140 degrees celsius. Finely slice all of the onions. Heat half of the olive oil in a casserole and add the sliced onions along with 1/2 tsp salt. Gently fry them, stirring them constantly, until they begin to caramelise. Keep an eye on them. They will begin to stick to the casserole once they’ve absorbed the oil. If that happens, just loosen them with a splash of water and turn down the heat.
- In the meantime, tear, slice or break the mushrooms. In batches of single layers, heat some of the remaining oil in a frying pan and add a large handful of the mushrooms along with a pinch of salt. Fry until golden and set aside. Then repeat with the remaining mushrooms. After the last batch of mushrooms, deglaze the hot pan with the red wine and turn off the heat. While the mushrooms are frying, peel the garlic cloves and pick the thyme leaves.
- Add the tomato paste to the onions and stir it in for a minute. Then add the mushrooms, garlic cloves and thyme leaves. Increase the heat and let it cook for just one minute, then add the wine, veg stock, bay leaves, rehydrated porcini mushrooms & chilli and their soaking liquid as well as the tins of tomatoes and half a tin worth of water. Bring to a boil, cover with a lid and cook in the oven for 2 hours. Return the casserole to the stove, remove the lid and cook for another 60 minutes, stirring every 15 minutes so that it doesn’t stick, until thick and creamy. 20 minutes before the time is up, bring a pan of generously seasoned water to a boil. Chop the parsley including the stalk and stir it into the ragù.
- Cook the fettuccine in the boiling water for one minute less than instructed on the packaging. Add the cooked pasta to the ragù along with a splash of pasta water and finish cooking the pasta in the sauce. Then serve with an extra drizzle of extra virgin olive oil.
Notes
Tip: You can refrigerate or even freeze any leftover ragù, but always cook the pasta fresh. Depending on how many you are serving on the day, just adjust the quantity of pasta (100g per person). If you are serving less than six at a time, just take the appropriate amount of ragù out of the casserole and finish cooking the pasta together with the ragù in a seperate pan.