Wild Mushroom Stroganoff with Egg Noodles

Ingredients

• 3 garlic cloves, minced
• 600 g mixed wild mushrooms, or chestnut mushrooms, torn or sliced
• salt and black pepper
• 1 onion, finely diced
• 1 tbsp smoked paprika
• 200 ml vegetable stock
• 150 ml soured cream
• 30 g unsalted butter
• 1 tbsp olive oil
• 1 tsp Dijon mustard
• 1 tbsp Worcestershire sauce
• 300 g dried egg noodles
• 15g flat-leaf parsley, roughly chopped
• Crusty bread, to serve
• Green salad, to serve
• Cornichons, to serve

Method

1. Bring a large pan of water to the boil for the noodles. Salt the water generously — it should taste like the sea. This is your only chance to season the noodles themselves. Cook them to the packet timing, drain, and set aside with a splash of the cooking water so they don't clag together.
2. Heat the butter and olive oil in a large frying pan over high heat until the butter is foaming and just starting to smell nutty. Season the mushrooms with salt and pepper, then add them to the pan in a single layer — work in two batches if you have to. Crowd the pan and the mushrooms steam in their own water instead of browning, and you'll end up with grey rubber. Leave them undisturbed for 4 minutes until the undersides are deeply golden, then toss and fry another 2 minutes until the edges are crisp and the pan smells properly nutty. Tip onto a plate.
3. Drop the heat to medium and add a splash more oil if the pan looks dry. Fry the onion for 5–6 minutes until soft and translucent, scraping up the sticky brown bits the mushrooms left behind — that fond is the backbone of the sauce. Stir in the garlic and smoked paprika and cook for 30 seconds, no more, until fragrant. Bloom the paprika in the fat so it tastes of warm earth and smoke rather than dust, and watch the garlic — burnt garlic turns the whole pan bitter.
4. Tip in the lentils, Worcestershire sauce, Dijon and vegetable stock. The stock lifts the fond off the base and gives the sauce something to live in. Bubble hard for 3–4 minutes until the liquid has reduced by about a third and coats the back of a spoon.
5. Return the mushrooms and any resting juices to the pan. Now pull it off the heat — this matters, soured cream splits the moment it boils — and stir through the soured cream until everything is glossy and bound. Taste, season, taste again. Adjust now, not at the table; it wants plenty of black pepper and possibly another pinch of salt to pull the smoke forward.
6. Loosen the noodles with a splash of hot water if they've tightened up, then divide between four warm bowls. Spoon the stroganoff over, scatter the chopped parsley across the top, drizzle with extra virgin olive oil and finish with a shower of parmesan. Tuck a few cornichons alongside and bring the crusty bread and green salad to the table for mopping and balance.