Fettucine with mushrooms in a lemon, garlic sauce

I am a big fan of pasta and I love cooking it. I haven't tried making my own pasta as yet, though I would love to give it a go sometime soon. But there's a huge variety of great fresh and dry pasta available in the super markets so its easy to get lazy sometimes :)

This dish is one of my favourite ways to have fettucine. The sauce is delicate and flavourful, zingy from the lemon, the mushrooms and walnuts make it warm and hearty. You can choose to use just olive oil as a healthier alternative to butter sauce. It works great both ways, the butter is just a little more decadent :)

Recipe

Serves 3-4 or 2 very hungry people!

Ingredients

250 g Fettucine

500 g Mushrooms (try and use a variety of mushrooms cup, swiss browns, portobello)

2 Lemons - zested and juiced

6-7 cloves of garlic

Parmesan (Grana Padano or Parmigiano Regiano)

60-70 g Walnuts

Olive oil

Extra Virgin olive oil

knob of butter

Cracked black pepper - to taste

Salt - to taste

Method

Bring 2 litres of water to a boil in a large pot. Add enough salt to the water, it should be really salty. This is the only way to season the pasta, you will not actually be eating that much salt. Add the pasta to the boiling water.

Slightly toast the walnuts in a pan, let them cool and chop them. In another pan heat a knob of butter till it turns light brown in colour add a tablespoon of olive oil to prevent it from burning. Add the chopped garlic to the butter-oil in the pan and let it cook till it turns light brown. (Dont over cook the garlic it turns dark brown and bitter) Add the mushrooms, salt and black pepper to taste. Add the juice and zest of one lemon to the sauce.

Toss the cooked pasta through the mushroom lemon sauce. Add the juice of the other lemon and stir to coat the fettucine with the sauce.To plate, serve the fettucine with a drizzle of extra virgin olive oil, scatter walnuts through the pasta and add some lemon zest and grated parmesan on top. Its best eaten right away.

ps it tastes better than it looks in my picture :)