After making the beet ravioli, I still had some fresh pasta sheets available, so I decided to make linguine with it, and do some sort of a mushroom sauce. A bit of research in my recipe files turned up this Mushroom Ragoût by Martha Rose Shulman, which looked quite promising.

I had a small quantity of high quality (and expensive) fresh mushrooms from Eataly Boston. They included a handful of lovely chanterelles and a few fresh morels, and they needed to be used right away. I cut those up, along with white button mushrooms and Shiitakes.

The Ragoût calls for dried wild mushrooms to supplement the fresh ones. Fortunately, I have a cabinet full of choices available, based on some purchases made over the past year, when fresh mushrooms were out-of-season.

The dried mushrooms get washed and then rehydrated in warm or hot water. After removing them from the soaking water, the mushrooms are coarsely chopped. The soaking water is then strained once or twice through a fine-mesh sieve to remove grit and sand. That liquid has an intense, woodsy aroma, and it makes beautiful sauces, with a little help from sautéed onions and garlic.

The finished ragoût was heated and tossed in generous amounts with the linguine, topped with freshly-ground Pecorino, olive oil and chopped parsley. Colors and smells were outstanding, ably assisted by a glass of Chenin Blanc from Birichino. Altogether, there were about 10 different kinds of wild mushrooms in this meal. That diversity made the dish rich — bursting with flavor and textures.