Rich Mushroom Stroganoff

Ingredients

• 1 tbsp plain flour
• 700g mixed mushrooms, thickly sliced
• 1 large onion, thinly sliced
• 2 garlic cloves, finely chopped
• 1 tsp smoked paprika
• 1 tbsp soy sauce
• 300ml hot vegetable stock
• 25g unsalted butter
• 1 tbsp olive oil
• 1 tsp Dijon mustard
• 150g soured cream
• 15g parsley, roughly chopped
• 350g dried egg noodles
• Salt and black pepper

Method

1. Bring a large pan of water to the boil and salt it generously — it should taste like the sea. Drop in the egg noodles and cook to packet time until just tender, then drain and keep warm with a little of their water clinging on.
2. Pat the mushrooms dry on kitchen paper — water means steam, and steam means no browning. Heat the butter and olive oil in a wide stainless or cast iron pan over a medium-high heat until the butter foams and quietens.
3. Sear the mushrooms in two or three batches, cut-side down, in a single layer. Don't crowd the pan — pile them all in at once and they'll sweat in their own water instead of taking on that deep golden edge. Three to four minutes a batch, season each one with salt as it goes, then tip onto a plate.
4. Drop the heat to medium, add a touch more oil if the pan looks dry, and slide in the onion with a pinch of salt. Cook for 6–8 minutes until soft, sweet and just starting to catch at the edges. Add the garlic and cook for 30 seconds, no more — until fragrant and pale gold. Burnt garlic turns the whole dish bitter, so watch it.
5. Stir in the smoked paprika and let it bloom in the buttery oil for 30–60 seconds until fragrant and deepened in colour. Raw paprika tastes dusty; bloomed paprika tastes of itself.
6. Sprinkle the flour over and stir for a minute to cook out the rawness. Pour in the hot stock a splash at a time, scraping up the browned bits stuck to the base — that's where the flavour lives. Stir in the blended cannellini beans, soy sauce and Dijon. The sauce will thicken and turn glossy within 2 minutes, coating the back of a spoon.
7. Return the mushrooms and any resting juices to the pan and simmer for 3–4 minutes until the sauce clings. Pull the pan off the heat — Greek yoghurt splits if you boil it — and stir in the yoghurt until silky. Fold through most of the parsley. Taste, season, taste again. Adjust now, not at the table.
8. Pile the noodles into warm bowls, spoon the stroganoff and all its glossy sauce over the top, and finish with the reserved parsley and a crack of black pepper.