Recipe of the Month: Arugula and Mushroom Pasta

Last Monday, when Brian asked me what I'd like for dinner, I said what I'd really like was a new dish for my Recipe of the Month, since the end of May was coming up. So Brian took stock of what we had in the fridge (mushrooms) and what we had in the garden that was ready to eat (arugula), searched for a recipe that would use both, and found this Warm Arugula and Mushroom Penne on a site called Recipeland.

As usual, he made a few modifications to the recipe. First, he doubled the amount of penne from four ounces to eight, since he didn't think it would be filling enough with mostly greens and just a sprinkling of pasta. (He also used plain penne rather than whole-wheat, because that was what we had on hand.) Since onions tend to disagree with me, he reduced the amount in the dish from a whole yellow onion to just half of a milder red onion.

Finally, and most interestingly, he omitted the Parmesan cheese the recipe called for. We'd just used up the last of our supply, and as part of our ongoing effort to reduce the amount of dairy in our diet, we hadn't replaced it. Although we're still having trouble finding a decent substitute for mozzarella, we figured replacing Parmesan shouldn't be nearly as hard, since it's used mostly for its flavor and not for its texture. Several sources had suggested that nutritional yeast—combined with bread crumbs or crushed nuts, or just sprinkled on straight—made a decent substitute, so Brian just combined four parts nutritional yeast with one part salt in a bowl and used that for sprinkling.

These changes, as far as we could tell, didn't hurt the dish any. As you can see, even with the extra penne Brian added, there was still a generous ratio of greens and mushrooms to pasta. As for the nutritional-yeast sprinkle, I liked it even better than real Parmesan. It added salt and umami flavors to the dish without that faint note of stinky feet that true Parmesan connoisseurs seem to consider part of this cheese's charm. Brian thought perhaps it was a bit too salty, but real Parmesan is plenty salty too, so I didn't find it at all overwhelming.

Even without the nutritional yeast, though, this dish wouldn't have been lacking in flavor. Between the savory mushrooms, peppery arugula, tart lemon, and the faint allicin bite of garlic and onion, there was plenty going on to keep the taste buds occupied. The blend of textures was interesting, too, with chewy mushrooms and pasta offsetting the just-wilted tenderness of the greens. All in all, it was a light, yet satisfying and flavorful dish, with plenty of healthy veggies—exactly what I look for in a Veggie of the Month recipe.

With the doubled volume of pasta, this recipe also made plenty of leftovers—but unfortunately, we didn't get the full benefit of them. When I went to fetch some out for my lunch on Tuesday, I popped the lid off the container a little too soon, and the whole Pyrex container went tipping out of the fridge, spilling most of its contents onto the floor. So, sadly, most of the leftover pasta ended up in the compost bin. (However, this illustrates another perk of leaving out the Parmesan; if we'd left it in, I wouldn't have been able to compost the spilled pasta, since any sort of cheese in a compost bin tends to attract pests.)

Fortunately, there's still plenty of arugula out in the garden, so I'm sure we'll get to make this dish at least once more, maybe twice, before arugula season is over. And when the arugula's all gone, we'll file away the recipe to pull out again when next year's crop comes up. This one's a keeper.