Pasta with Oyster Mushrooms, Garlic Scapes, Shrimp & Miso
Ingredients
- 1 onion, sliced into half-moons
- 4 garlic scapes, roughly chopped
- 3/4 lb oyster mushrooms
- 1 tablespoon aka miso (red miso)
- 1 tablespoon butter
- 8 oz baby spinach
- 3/4 lb jumbo shrimp thawed if frozen, and peeled
- 3/4 lb short pasta
- 1/4 cup shredded Parmesan
Instructions
- Cook the pasta according to package instructions.
- Meanwhile, in a large skillet, saute the onion and garlic scapes until the onion is translucent.
- Add the mushrooms and saute for about 3 minutes, until the mushroom starts to soften. Add the miso and butter and stir until the miso dissolves and the butter melts.
- Add the spinach, shrimp and 1/4 cup pasta water. Continue to cook, stirring occasionally, until the shrimp is fully cooked and the spinach has wilted.
- Stir into the parm and pasta. Serve immediately.
I didn’t make this dish with the idea to share it but it was so good and easy, I feel like I have to. We couldn’t make what we had planned last night so I had to quickly pivot and think about something different I could make quickly and with what I had on hand.
I know I have talked a lot about trying to shop less frequently during the pandemic. I do not really meal plan before I shop. I normally have some vague ideas about what I might want to make but it’s tricky to know what is going to be at the store so I try to focus on getting ingredients that we enjoy and that are fairly flexible. I don’t know what is coming in my produce delivery until a couple of days before it arrives and customizing is suspended right now so that doesn’t lend itself well to planning ahead either.
This recipe is a great example of trying to use up what is on hand to excellent results. It really is my favorite way to cook. It’s like a puzzle.
Back in the before times, I remember having a mushroom dish that was drizzled with a miso-butter that was so good! I was reminded of that dish when I was facing our refrigerator full of ingredients from H Mart that my husband picked up that looked good, including a big pack of oyster mushrooms and two kinds of miso. I love oyster mushrooms and they are so meaty, they can really hold their own in a dish.
I had some spinach, frozen jumbo shrimp (normally I do not get jumbo, you don’t get very many in the package and I like the flexibility of smaller shrimp), casarecce pasta from earlier Aldi trips on hand plus some aging garlic scapes from our produce box. Garlic scapes are more versatile than you’d think, in this recipe, I basically treated them like a vegetable. They get very tender and infuse everything with a light garlic flavor.
The miso adds this secret, almost creamy depth to the dish that really brought out the flavor of the mushrooms. The result is rich-tasting yet fresh and perfect for the very beginning of summer. It really tasted like something I’d spend $30 for at a restaurant vs something I made in 30 minutes at home with random stuff I pulled out of the fridge.
