I stole this one from good old Urban Gourmet, a shithole that employed me for about 9 months. I haven’t made it in years, but if I ever look in my fridge and see gorgonzola that needs to be used, this is what I’ll do with it. You can use any kind of blue cheese for this dish, but cheeses with more complexity than gorgonzola will be overpowered by the cream and any subtlety or individual character lost. Thus, an MoR (middle of the road) blue like Danish Blue or Gorg work best. I like to use farfalle – one of the few times this is true. It’s most likely because that was what I chose when I made this for myself when working at Urban Gourmet, so that’s what I associate it with.
Urban Gourmet had about 8 pasta sauces on its menu, and you could choose between three different kinds of pasta: spaghetti, farfalle, and rigatoni. The pasta was all cooked in large batches by a Brazilian coke head who in addition to being the principle prep cook and right hand man of the Masshole owner was also the main delivery person. Before I worked there I would often bemoan the long delivery times during the evenings; after I started, I learned that it was because he would often stop to party at dorms and frats to whom he was delivering food. He claimed to be amassing a large heard of cattle on his ranch back in Brazil by sending his extra money home to his father-in-law, who was slowly building his cattle empire. Whether or not this was true is highly debatable, but he often expressed regret at how little he was able to send due to his weekly coke habit. I mean, there were two obvious weak links in that chain (him, his father-in-law) but here’s hoping that his plan worked out. (Urban Gourmet sure didn’t, for him, the Masshole owner, nor the Masshole owner’s downtrodden wife who answered the phones and took delivery orders.) The other thing I remember about him was that he spread mayonnaise on his pizza – the only thing I ever saw him eat, and he did so very quickly – which he claimed was the way it was done in Brazil. I love mayonnaise, probably slightly more than most, but that’s disgusting any way you slice it.
Anyway, back to the pasta: he would cook it in large batches, then drain it and cool it and apportion by serving size into plastic bags, which then sat in large piles in the low-boy fridge. When cooking a pasta to order, the sauce was assembled in a small sauté pan, and at the appointed moment that it was ready, the contents of the pasta bag, cold and congealed into one big blob, was added to the sauce. I was advised by the Masshole owner during my first days of training not to break up the lump of pasta with tongs or any utensil, as this would tear the pasta – but to let the sauce do the work. The irony of his suddenly respecting the pasta notwithstanding, this method actually did work and taught me the value of cooking the pasta in the sauce (the starch that bleeds out of the pasta helps the whole thing coalesce) and also honed my sautéing/pasta-tossing skills. There’s a special moment in the process, after the addition of the pasta to the sauce, and possibly some cheese or additional olive oil, when the pasta and the sauce unite to form an entirely new entity – your finished dish – that I learned to read and appreciate.
However, the pre-cooking and cold-storing of the pasta didn’t do it any favors. The weight of the individual bags sitting upon one another meant that all but the ones on the very top of the bin were smushed. The spaghetti was invariably overcooked, and the rigatoni was always flattened and crushed. I found that the farfalle, perhaps because it started flat and had nowhere to go, held up the best to this type of processing, so that’s why I make this dish with farfalle.
Ingredients:
- 2 medium shallots or 1 large, chopped fine
- 3 cloves garlic, minced
- 12 oz button or crimini mushrooms
- 2 TBS olive oil
- 2 TBS butter
- 2 TBS white wine or vermouth
- 1 pint heavy cream
- 8 oz crumbled gorgonzola cheese
- Salt and pepper
- 1 lb farfalle
- 2 oz parmiggiano reggiano
Directions:
Bring a large pot of water to boil.
To prepare the mushrooms, trim the stems and slice length-wise match stick-thick. Slicing mushrooms quickly this way while looking up at someone or something else is an easy and good way to impress people, and even if there’s no one nearby, I usually look around just for the fuck of it. In fact I don’t think I’ve ever actually seen a single mushroom I’ve ever sliced, since I’m always pretending to look around at something else or pretending I have something to say to someone. I first observed this in action as I spoke to the prep cook/delivery guy at Urban Gourmet while he sliced a huge bag of mushrooms and kept talking to me throughout. He also left the cigarette dangling from his lips. He had a $70/week cigarette habit, back when cigarettes cost $5 a pack, and lord knows how much his weekly coke habit was. He claimed he needed both to help him work his regular 90-hour weeks, but I wonder he needed to work 90 hours in a week just to afford his habits. This was 16 years ago, and for the life of me, I can’t remember his name. In any case, his lightning-fast, divided-attention mushroom slicing made a big impression on me as my knife skills were just developing, but I tried it and found that for some reason, it’s pretty easy. The mushrooms are soft enough that you don’t have to worry about the knife – even a dull one – jumping around. I encourage you to try it, but be safe of course. You do need to know the basics of finger placement for it to work safely.
Assuming you still have all your fingers, bring a pot of water to boil and heat the olive oil and 1 TBS of the butter over high heat in a large sauté pan. When the butter is just melted and still foamy, add the shallots, garlic, and mushrooms, then salt and pepper. Toss once or twice to combine thoroughly, then let it sit for about 30-60 seconds (depending on how powerful your stove is). The idea here is to develop a nice, caramelized brown on one side of the mushroom, and for the liquid they give off to evaporate as it hits the pan – not for them to cook in their own liquid. The shallot and garlic will not brown right away because the mushrooms will supply a constant stream of moisture as they cook, but by keeping the heat high enough, you won’t allow this moisture to pool and end up with a slushy mess.
Toss and cook without stirring for another minute or so, then deglaze the pan with the white wine. Try to add it evenly to the pan, since if you pour it only in one corner, the mushrooms in that corner will absorb it and it will not be thoroughly dispersed throughout. Stir and scrape the bottom of the pan vigorously and cook a sec. Add the cream, a little more salt and pepper, stir, and bring to a brisk simmer. Reduce for a couple of minutes at a simmer, then add the gorgonzola and 2 oz of the parmiggiano. Stir until the cheeses have melted and are completely incorporated. Cook the sauce for another 10-15 minutes, until it is reduced to the proper consistency. If it gets too thick, see this recipe for notes on how to rescue it.
Meanwhile, cook the pasta. When it is finished, add it to the sauce, toss, and serve immediately, of course, with parmiggiano reggiano.
The Grumpy Gastronome 
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