Last week I shared a cold slaw recipe that I happened to serve with my yummy beef ribs (recipe in my blog archives: February 25, 2013). If you haven’t made these ribs yet, I encourage you to try them. And actually, hypothetically, you have to make them in order to make this pasta dish, as I use the pot juice from the ribs as the base for this week’s pasta sauce.
If you’ve read many of my blog posts, you know that it’s my cooking sensibility to use what I have on hand, including leftovers. So, when I make beef ribs I always keep the cooking juices for some other use. Once the juice has cooled, I peel off the fat layer and have a beautifully flavored, thick broth for a soup base or to use as the liquid component to a stir-fry or vegetable sauté … and now as a pasta sauce!
Technically you could use canned, beef broth as a substitute, though I’m not sure the flavor would be quite so rich as the beef juice offers. But, hey, give it a try and let me know how it turns out!
Pasta with Beefy Mushroom Sauce
1 cup uncooked penne pasta (I use brown rice pasta)
1 t butter
12 medium sized mushrooms, sliced
1 ½ cups beef juice
2 T water
1 t cornstarch
Good dashes of garlic and onion powders
Salt and pepper to taste
Grated Parmesan or Romano cheese
Bring well-salted water to a boil in a pot and cook the pasta al dente, then drain.
Melt butter in a sauté pan, add mushrooms and cook just until soft. Add beef juice and cook at medium heat for approximately 5 minutes.
Make a roux with water and cornstarch, then add slowly to mushroom sauce, stirring constantly with a whisk. Reduce heat and continue stirring, allowing the sauce to thicken.
Add garlic and onion powders, salt and pepper, to taste.
Add drained pasta to the sauce, add a couple of tablespoons of grated cheese, toss everything together and heat through.
Serve in wide bowls with more grated cheese on top!
Makes enough for 2 dinner servings.
I have to tell you that my husband ate this pasta, making yum noises through the entire meal. What a lovely response to such a super easy, dinner dish!
Eat well. Be happy.
Plynn Gutman 