Zucchini Pasta with Mushroom Bolognese

Tonight's dinner actually comes from an idea that my mom gave me. I mentioned to her over the weekend that I had no idea what to do with all of this zucchini and she said that I should make zucchini pasta. I'd never heard of such a thing - using zucchini strips in place of pasta - so of course, I had to try it out!

After a little bit of research looking for a tasty sauce to go over top of the zucchini I found a recipe for Mushroom Bolognese. Now, I have to admit that I almost didn't make this because I didn't get mushrooms in my bin this week and I usually don't like to use vegetables that I don't already have on hand, but this sounded so good that I couldn't pass it up.

I started making the sauce by adding chopped portobello mushrooms, celery, carrots, leeks and minced garlic to a sauce pan with some olive oil and garlic and cooked this over medium heat for about 10 minutes just until the vegetables began to soften. This mixture was removed from the pan and place into a larger sauce pan.  To the original pan, a bit of white wine was added to scrape up the browned bits from the bottom and poured over the mixture in the new pan.  To the mushroom mixture, I added a little over a cup of beef broth and a spoonful of tomato paste, brought this to a boil, reduced the heat to a simmer and cooked, partially covered, until the broth was almost completely absorbed, this took about 20 minutes. While the sauce was simmering, I added a bit of butter and olive oil to the original sauce pan and cooked about 3 ounces of enoki mushrooms until just browned over medium heat, removed them from the pan and chopped them before adding them to the sauce. Once the enoki mushrooms were added, the sauce simmered for another 5 to 10 minutes before adding salt, pepper and nutmeg to taste with about 4 tablespoons of heavy cream.

For the pasta, using a mandoline slicer I sliced the peeled zucchini into thin strips, lengthwise.  Dylan and I then set out to cut each of the slices into 4 thin strips (making about 4 cups of sliced zucchini), resembling fettuccine pasta.  I added the strips to a large saute pan with some butter, olive oil, garlic, salt, pepper and red pepper flakes.  This was cooked until the zucchini was just tender, about 8 minutes.

I topped the "pasta" dish with some shredded asiago cheese and served it with a side of kalamata olive bread.  I have to say that I will probably be making the zucchini pasta more often. As I'm sure you are aware by now, I am not a huge fan of pasta dishes, so this was perfect for me!  I'm happy that I now have an alternative to pasta so that I can make more sauces (because I love sauce, just not so much the noodles)! This is also great idea for anyone trying to cut down on carbs!