Miso Mushroom Pasta

I don’t get to cook often. My schedule basically allows me time to cook a nice, hot meal from scratch once a week on Fridays – twice if I’m lucky and don’t have a concert to work Saturday evening. And so I savor my cooking time. It’s something I absolutely love to do, and Friday meals usually work out very well, providing a nice hot dinner for me and Jim (the boyfriend) and depending on the recipe, several other meals that can be frozen and eaten at some point in the future at work.

However, recently I’ve run into a problem. It’s lent.

Now, I don’t fast. It’s just not something I do. But as a Catholic, Jim does. And apparently all my recipes are completely meat-centric. Even my vegetable soup. So I’ve been on the look out for great meatless recipes so that I can keep cooking these next few weeks. This past Friday I tried out a recipe I found while looking for ways to use the pound of miso I bought a few weeks back: Miso Mushroom Pasta.

I’ve been wanting to make miso salmon for a while, but Jim has never had miso before – not even basic miso soup. So he doesn’t know if he likes it or not. This pasta seemed like a great way to introduce it – the mushroom flavor stays dominant, with the miso only enhancing the flavors already there. Plus, this way if it turned out he absolutely hated the taste of miso, it wasn’t $10 worth of salmon down the drain.

Overall, the pasta was a success – and we were so hungry that we totally forgot to photograph the finished product. It’s an easy recipe – most of it hangs on the Progresso Recipe Starter providing the base for the sauce. Add some miso and some greek yogurt and you’re good to go (I left out the sriracha because I’m a weeny and don’t like it). I also sautéed up some mushrooms to add some “meat” to the sauce other than the broccoli. The whole process took me about 20 minutes from start to finish, and it fed us for the next two days – it reheats beautifully.

Final grade for this recipe? A+ for both taste and ease. And Jim didn’t hate the miso… so the salmon is on the docket for tonight! Wish me luck!

Any great meatless or miso recipes I should try?