About the Recipe
If you love the "fifth flavour" - umami - you will love ishiri sauce. It's made from fermented squid so it possesses a pungent tatse and aroma all its own. It's only made in one region of Japan and isn't easy to get hold of. (I have a brief Youtube tutorial on it if you're interested.) I usually use it to flavour fish dishes and like to combine it with butter and olive oil. This recipe is a great way to get to know ishiri. You don't need to use spirali pasta or ramiro peppers necessarily - penne and other shaped pasta and regular bell peppers will work just as well.
Ingredients
150g spirali pasta
70g shiitake mushrooms
1 sweet pointed ramiro pepper*
70g shimeji mushrooms
100g enoki mushrooms
1/2 onion
3 cloves garlic
1 tbsp veg oil
1/2 tsp japanese stock granules
a pinch of pepper
2 tbsp ishiri sauce**
25g butter
1 sheet of nori
*if you can’t find a ramiro pepper, you can use 1/2 a red bell pepper instead
** ishiri sauce is a fermented sauce made from squid - if you're interested to learn a little more about it, please see my youtube tutorial for more details
Preparation
rinse all the vegetables
remove the bottoms of the enoki & shimeji mushrooms and separate the stems
remove the stem ends of the shiitake mushrooms and cut the caps into slices
thinly slice the garlic & onion
halve the pepper lengthways, remove the stalk, seeds & the white flesh, then cut into slices diagonally
fold the nori sheet in half 3 times, then use scissors to cut it into strips
prepare the spirali pasta according to the instructions on the packet
heat the veg oil in a frying pan, add the onion & garlic and stir for 1 min
add the enoki & shimeji mushrooms and stir for 2 mins
add the shiitake mushrooms, ramiro pepper, black pepper, butter, stock granules and stir for 2 mins
add the ishiri sauce and stir well
add the spirali pasta and mix everything together well
your 3 mushroom pasta with ishiri sauce is ready to serve. sprinkle over the nori just before serving