Pasta boscaiola with duck confit recipe
In this take on the Italian classic pasta boscaiola, we are substituting traditional bacon with duck confit. We are retaining cream, mushrooms, onions and garlic, just like in the original, but upping the ante with the addition of the tomatoes two ways.
Servings: 4
Ingredients
- 2 duck confit legs together with duck fat used for preserving confit homemade or store-bought
- 4 oz. 224 g of your favorite pasta (homemade or store-bought)
- 1 yellow onion
- ½ cup diced canned tomatoes
- ½ cup sun-dried tomatoes in oil
- ¾ cup heavy whipping cream
- ¾ cup white wine
- ½ lb. 226 g mushrooms (brown, white or a combination of two)
- 4 Garlic cloves
- 1 tsp. sage leaves dry or fresh
- Salt and pepper to taste
- Parmigiano Reggiano to taste
Instructions
Prepare Ingredients:
- First, remove duck leg confit meat off the bone and shred it into medium size pieces. Reserve the fat used for storing duck confit. It will be used for frying.
- Next, mince the onion, thinly slice garlic and mushrooms. Additionally, remove sage leaves off the stems. Set all the ingredients aside.
Preparing pasta sauce:
- To start on the sauce, first, heat a frying pan over medium-high heat. Then, add shredded duck leg confit and duck fat used for storing the confit. Fry briefly, till the duck fat meltes and duck leg confit brownes slightly. Any duck confit skin should be crisped. Once finished, about 5-7 minutes, remove duck confit to a separate plate and set aside. Make sure not to discard rendered fat in the pan as it will be used for cooking the rest of the ingredients.
- Using the same frying pan add the onions and lower the heat to medium-low. Then fry the onions until translucent, 3-5 minutes and add garlic. Give it a good stir and fry for about 1 minute, just enough for the garlic to soften slightly and become fragrant.
- Next, add sliced mushrooms to the pan and increase the heat to medium-high. Fry with onions and garlic till mushrooms are no longer translucent and begin to brown slightly, about 8-10 minutes.
- Add sundried tomatoes together with the oil used to preserve them. Give the entire mixture a good stir and let the sundried tomatoes heat through, 1-2 minutes. Then, very quickly add diced tomatoes and mix everything together. Cook the mixture for about 5 minutes. You want the tomatoes well incorporated into the sauce.
- Next add sage and immediately deglaze with white wine. Let the wine reduce by about 2/3.
- Add whipping cream and lower the heat to medium-low. Once the cream is well incorporated into the sauce and has reduced by about ½ it is time to turn off the heat. Ideally, your pasta should be ready at this time so that it can be added to the pasta sauce immediately.
Cook the pasta:
- Depending on the type of pasta you plan to use for this dish, and how long it needs to be cooked, you may want to start on cooking pasta first. To begin, bring a pot of water to a boil. Then, add a good pinch of salt to the water
- Add pasta to the boiling water and cook according to the package instructions.
- Once cooked, drain the pasta and add to the finished sauce immediately.
Adding pasta to the pasta sauce:
- If you timed cooking pasta and pasta sauce perfectly, all you need to do, is add pasta to the pan with a sauce, mix everything together and bring your pasta covered in sauce to a simmer on a medium-low heat. You need to stir pasta and sauce together to make sure that pasta absorbs as much of the sauce as possible. This step should take only 2 minutes.
Plating pasta alla boscaiola
- Spoon the creamy pasta boscaiola onto individual plates.
- Grate fresh parmigiano reggiano and generously add on top of the plated pasta