Italian cuisine is rich of classics recipes, made important by local and regional traditions. These typical dishes are almost always untouchable, but often you can find tasty variations, without altering the original recipes too much.

Being in the middle of autumn, we chose to revisit the Carbonara, eliminating an essential ingredient such as the pillow - hoping not to be unpleasant to anyone - and adding a seasonal ingredient, such as mushrooms (both champignon and honey mushroom).

The rule is that in a revisitation only a few elements are changed, so we chose to leave untouched the creamy sauce with egg, pepper, pecorino cheese and parmesan cheese.

Trust us, this carbonara pasta alternative will amaze you!

Mushrooms: champignon, fleshy and delicate

In Italy there is a huge variety of mushrooms that lend themselves to the preparation of many recipes. Each species has a particular taste and obviously not all are edible.

The most common mushrooms to be found on our tables are the champignon, porcini, honey mushrooms and cardoncelli.

Champignons are the most available variety. Their cultivation technique takes place inside artificial caves and was imported from France in the early 1900s in the Vicenza area. Today, Italy is one of the main European producers.

Thanks to the ease in cleaning them and their delicate taste, the mushrooms can be cooked in different ways. The most widespread cooking takes place in a pan with a clove of garlic and a drizzle of extra virgin olive oil, before being added to recipes of first or second courses.

Honey Mushrooms: so small and so tasty

This mushrooms are known as "honey mushrooms" not for their taste, which on the contrary is very intense, but for their characteristic color.

This variety is edible only from cooked, because inside the pegs there are toxins that must be eliminated overcoming the temperature of 65-70 degrees. Therefore a long cooking in boiling water is mandatory. We advise you to keep this in mind, always eliminating the cooking water even when you add them to pasta or risotto and never use them raw. They are perfect for pasta dishes, to add an extra touch to your bruschetta and to give taste to roasts.

If you want to shorten the time spent cooking to prepare our recipe, just start preparing them a little earlier than the other ingredients.

For the carbonara with mushrooms we prefer these two varieties for their fragrance and consistency, so as to replace the pillow without regrets.

In the absence of fresh mushrooms you can use dried ones because they easily maintain their nutritional and organoleptic characteristics.

INGREDIENTS FOR 4 SERVINGS

300 g Antonio Amato Vermicelli

300 g champignon and honey mushrooms

3 eggs

70 g pecorino cheese

30 g parmesan cheese

1 clove garlic

peper to taste

salt to taste

Antonio Amato extra virgin olive oil to taste

DIRECTIONS

As we said earlier, cook the honey mushrooms first in plenty of boiling water. Drain, rinse and dice the mushrooms, combining them with the champignon which you have previously cleaned thoroughly.

In a frying pan, brown a clove of garlic with a drizzle of oil, add the mushrooms and season with salt, pouring a dash of warming water to cook the pasta.

Cook the pasta in plenty of boiling salted water and in the meantime start preparing the eggs. In a bowl, beat the egg yolks with a pinch of salt, pepper, pecorino cheese and parmesan.

Drain the pasta into the pan with the mushrooms and let them mix over a medium heat with a ladle of cooking water. Remove the pan from the heat and while the pasta is still hot, add the egg, stirring well.

The creamy sauce is ready in the respect of tradition, as well as your carbonara revisited with mushrooms.

Enjoy your meal!