Mushroom Sauce for Pasta

This is a quick and easy pasta sauce that breaks away from traditional cream sauces or tomato/marinara sauces. It is a classic rustic mushroom sauce that is delicious and looks great on the plate. Ingredients: 3 tablespoons olive oil 1 onion, peeled and diced 3 cloves garlic, peeled and chopped fine 2 pounds mushrooms – you can mix plain white button mushrooms, cremini, shiitake as you like 3-4 tablespoons tomato paste ½ cup dry wine, try either red or white to see what you like best 1 cup chicken or vegetable stock. I use Better Than Bouillon to make my stock according to the label. 2 tablespoons fresh rosemary needles, chopped ½ teaspoon crushed red pepper flakes ¼ teaspoon sugar, or to taste Optional: ½ ounce dried Porcini mushrooms, soaked to reconstitute, drained and added along with the other mushrooms for flavor ½ teaspoon or more dried sage added along with the rosemary Wash and slice the mushrooms to prepare them for cooking. Heat the oil in an uncovered medium-large pot on medium-high heat and sauté the garlic until it almost starts to turn brown. Add the onion and cook it down until the onions start to turn translucent but before they start to brown. Now add the mushrooms and cook them down so that they start releasing their moisture and shrink in size. Stir often to cook them evenly. Cook them until they reduce in size and most of the water released by the mushrooms is cooked off. This should take 10 or 20 minutes depending on your situation. Add the tomato paste and cook for another 2-5 minutes so that the tomato paste is heated through and well combined. Pour in the wine and cook down the mixture until the wine is nearly all evaporated. Add the stock and then lower the heat so that everything simmers without producing a rolling boil. Cook the mixture down to desired thickness. You can cut short the cooking to have a sauce that flows through pasta with mushroom chunks or else keep on cooking until the sauce congeals to a sort of topping for any dish. All of the cooking with these liquids is done with an uncovered pot so that they liquid has a chance to evaporate. Depending on your choice of stock, there should be plenty of salt in this dish already, otherwise salt & sugar the sauce to your taste. The sauce will keep refrigerated for a couple or days or else try freezing it for later use. Enjoy!