Mushroom Miso Cream Pasta
We complain about Americanized Chinese food all the time, but one of my guilty pleasures is the “Western Food” in Southeast Asia. In Malaysia or Singapore, there usually is a Western food stall in the hawker center, serving up a multitude of dishes, ranging from the locals’ favorite, chicken chop, served with 10 different types of sauce (if you were curious, my favorite is black pepper mushroom) to pasta, with the favorite being Carbonara. Carbonara was a loose term to mean any pasta with a creamy sauce, and my father was one of the many to love this creamy sauce pasta.
More about this creamy sauce - it is no where near what Carbonara actually is, but instead is associated with Campbell’s Cream of Mushroom. My mum would use a ratio of the instant soup packets along with the actual canned good, and we added chicken and some vegetables to it. Yes, this was our idea of Western food, and was a common dish my family grew up with. Before you laugh / judge us, may we remind you of dishes like Sesame Chicken and General Tso’s Chicken drowned in “brown Asian sauce” (that actually I crave for sometimes as well).
To this day, Pek and I still crave for it, except that in an attempt to cut down on high sodium food, a revised dish was born out of miso. It still contains the depth and homey-ness of the dish, and has a consistent place on our menus for little get-togethers.
Recipe
Ingredients
1 yellow onion
1 blob of butter
250-300g brown mushrooms
1 tbsp miso paste
200ml cooking cream
250g pasta shells
Method
Dice one big yellow onion and fry in pot with a slab of butter and some olive oil.
Add sliced mushrooms and cook until mushrooms are soft.
Once soft then add a heaping tablespoon of miso (mixed with water) and a box of cooking cream.
Add water and a pinch of salt.
Add your pasta (about half a bag of small shells).
Cook for 20 min until the pasta is fully cooked.
