Mushroom Spaghetti with Miso Cream Sauce

I love Asian mushrooms. I am so grateful that I can find shitake where I live. But in a bigger cities, more varieties are available. I brought "Enoki" from Florida. I love this mushroom. It's very long and skinny and a kind of crunchy. I should have bought different kinds of mushrooms at the Asian market that I went to. I decided to do creamy mushroom pasta, so I went to a store near my house to get shitake.

I remember that I had Miso cream sauce at a restaurant in CT before we moved away. I made it for chicken and it was good, but I thought it would be really nice with pasta.

When I was growing up in Tokyo more than 3 decades ago, Italian style pasta was not really common. Fortunately I was introduced to it by my father who had lived in Rome. However, if we go to a pasta restaurant (there were restaurants that serve only pasta dishes... they still exist), lots of dishes were very Japanized. We didn't like it at all. I also remember Western people were complaining about weird Japanese spaghetti dishes in 80's. I completely agreed with them at the moment. Nevertheless, now I look back, those restaurants seem to be the pioneers of fusion dishes.

This pasta could be easily on the menu back then though I don't remember seeing it.

*Mushroom spaghetti with Miso cream sauce*

Spaghetti 240 g

Olive oil 1tbsp

Garlic 2 cloves sliced

Mushroom of your choice 2 cups

Cream 2/3 cup

*Yuzu Kosho 1/4 tsp

Miso 2 tsp

Salt

< 1 > Start boiling the pasta.

< 2 > Saute garlic in olive oil and put mushrooms when garlic started to brown.

< 3 > Pour cream in and cook in low heat for 5 minutes. Remove from heat.

< 4 > Cook pasta to al dente. Keep 2 table spoon of boiling water.

< 5 > Dissolve Yuzu Kosho and Miso in the boiled water, and pour it in the cream mixture with pasta. Cook with medium heat for 2 minutes. If the miso is not salty enough, sprinkle with sea salt.

< 6 > Serve with Shiso if it's available. Putting bunch of Arugula is nice, also.

*Yuzu Kosho is citrus pepper paste from Southern part of Japan. It's made of Japanese citrus, Yuzu and chili pepper. I didn't know about it until 10 years ago until I was befriended with someone from Oita. She recommended to put it in Miso soup. I loved it so much and it became regular condiment in my house hold ever since.

I would think substituting is possible... Maybe grated lime zest and green pepper sauce? I need to try that sometime.

We enjoyed July 4th in St. Augustine. I loved the blue sky and beautiful architecture in down town.