Italian Pici with White Mushroom and Walnut Ragù | Pici al Ragù Bianco di Funghi e Noci
Updated: Oct 24
A ragù bianco is a ragù that never met a tomato, and in Tuscany it is older than the red kind by centuries. This one has no meat either. Its depth comes from three sorts of mushroom cooked until they colour, from the soaking liquor of dried porcini, and from a walnut cream stirred in at the end.
The walnut keeps it from tasting like a compromise. Ground with milk soaked bread and a little garlic it behaves in the pan as cream would, binding the mushroom juices into something that coats the pasta, but it carries a bitterness and a tannic grip dairy cannot supply.
The pasta underneath is the rough Sienese rope used for the region's heaviest meat sauces, and it is worth rolling a shade thinner here, so the walnut and the porcini reach the front of the mouth instead of hiding behind a mouthful of flour.
Yield: 4 servings. Prep: 55 minutes. Dough rest: 30 minutes. Cook: 45 minutes for the sauce, 4 to 6 minutes for the pasta. Difficulty: intermediate. Course: primo. Region: Tuscany, the Sienese hills and the forests of Monte Amiata.
The Story
Before tomato reached Tuscan country kitchens in quantity, which means well into the nineteenth century, every ragù was white. Onion, a fat, something savoury, wine and broth: that was the formula, and it survives in ragù bianco di maiale and in the funghi sauces of the mountain villages.
Mushrooms were the obvious filling for a meatless week, and there were a great many meatless weeks. The forests of Monte Amiata and the Casentino produce porcini in quantities regulated by permit for decades, and drying the surplus above the hearth gave every household a jar of intensity for winter. That jar, and the brown liquid the slices give up when soaked, is the backbone of this sauce.
Walnuts arrived by a different route. Under the mezzadria, the sharecropping system that shaped the Tuscan landscape until the 1960s, walnut trees were planted along the margins of the fields where they cost nothing in arable ground. The nuts belonged to the family rather than to the landlord's share, which is why they turn up so often at the poorer table: crushed into sauces, folded into bread, ground with milk soaked crumb to thicken whatever needed it.
Ingredients
For the pici dough
Italian tipo 00 flour, 1 3/4 cups (220 g)
Durum wheat semola rimacinata, 1 cup (160 g)
Warm water, about 3/4 cup (180 ml), added gradually
Extra virgin olive oil, 1 tbsp (15 ml)
Fine sea salt, 1 tsp (6 g)
Semola for the tray, about 1/2 cup (85 g)
For the mushroom ragù
Dried porcini, 3/4 oz (20 g)
Warm water for soaking, 1 cup (240 ml)
Cremini mushrooms, quartered, 12 oz (340 g)
Oyster mushrooms, torn, 5 oz (150 g)
Shallots, finely diced, 2 oz (55 g)
Garlic clove, thinly sliced, 1
Celery, very finely diced, 1 oz (30 g)
Extra virgin olive oil, 3 tbsp (45 ml)
Unsalted butter, 2 tbsp (28 g)
Dry white Vernaccia or Trebbiano, 1/2 cup (120 ml)
Thyme sprigs, 4; bay leaf, 1
Hot vegetable broth, 1 cup (240 ml), plus more
Fine sea salt, 1 tsp (6 g), in stages
Freshly ground black pepper, to taste
For the walnut cream
Shelled walnuts, 3 1/2 oz (100 g)
Stale white bread crumb, no crust, 3/4 oz (20 g)
Whole milk, 1/3 cup (80 ml)
Garlic clove, small, 1
Extra virgin olive oil, 2 tbsp (30 ml)
Fine sea salt, 1/2 tsp (3 g)
For finishing
Parmigiano Reggiano aged 24 months, grated, 1 1/2 oz (45 g)
Toasted walnuts, crushed, 2 tbsp (15 g)
Flat leaf parsley, chopped, 1 tbsp
Finely grated zest of 1/2 lemon
Coarse sea salt, 2 1/2 tbsp (40 g) per 5 quarts (4.7 l) of water
Preparation
Work the dough and let it settle
Tip both flours and the salt onto a board, open a crater and pour in the oil with two thirds of the warm water. Draw the flour inward until the mass holds, then press and fold with the heel of your hand for 10 minutes, adding the last of the water only if the dough refuses to come together. It should finish firm and slightly rough. Cover it for 30 minutes.
Draw the strands a shade finer
Press the dough to a little under 1/4 inch, wipe the surface with a film of olive oil and slice it into narrow bands. Set both palms on the centre of one and push outward while the hands separate, letting it lengthen under a light steady weight. Because this sauce is lighter than a meat ragù, stop when the strand is closer to a thick spaghetto than a bucatino. Scatter the ropes over a semola dusted tray.
Soak the porcini and save the liquor
Cover the dried porcini with the warm water for 25 minutes, pressing them down so every slice swells. Lift them out, squeeze them over the bowl and chop them roughly. Pour the soaking liquid through a paper filter or fine cloth to catch the grit that always settles at the bottom. That amber liquid is the most concentrated ingredient in the dish and goes into the pan, never down the drain.
Dry sauté the fresh mushrooms
Put a wide pan over high heat with no fat at all and add the cremini in a single layer. Leave them until they hiss, release their water and reabsorb it, about 6 minutes, turning once the undersides have colour. Repeat with the oyster mushrooms, which need less. Cooking them dry drives off moisture that would otherwise stew them in the sauce.
Build the base and bring the mushrooms back
Lower the heat to medium, add the oil and butter and soften the shallot, celery and sliced garlic with a pinch of salt for 6 to 8 minutes without browning. Return both lots of fresh mushrooms with the chopped porcini, add the thyme and bay, and stir for 2 minutes so the fat coats the mushrooms.
Deglaze and stew gently
Pour in the white wine and let it hiss away until the pan smells of wine rather than alcohol, about 3 minutes. Add the filtered porcini liquor and half the hot broth, bring it to a murmur and cook uncovered for 20 to 25 minutes, adding broth when the pan looks tight. It is ready when the mushrooms are glossy and a spoon leaves a brief trail on the base. Remove the thyme and bay.
Blend the walnut cream
While the ragù stews, toast the walnuts in a dry pan for 4 minutes until they smell sweet, watching closely because walnut oil turns bitter in seconds. Reserve 2 tablespoons for the garnish. Soak the bread crumb in the milk, then blend the rest of the walnuts with the crumb, the garlic, the oil and the salt until smooth and thick, loosening with warm water if the blades stall.
Salt the water and cook the pici
Bring 5 quarts (4.7 l) of water to a hard boil and salt it generously, since the dough carries almost none and there is no cured meat here to make up the difference. Knock the surplus semola off the strands first. Pici this thickness need 4 to 6 minutes; taste one from the thickest part of the batch and pull them while the core still offers the smallest resistance.
Mantecare with walnut cream and Parmigiano
Ladle a cup of cooking water aside before draining. Move the pici into the pan with a little of that water and toss over medium heat for a minute. Off the flame, spoon in the walnut cream and the Parmigiano and keep the pasta moving, adding cooking water a splash at a time until the sauce turns pale and glossy. Parsley and pepper last.
Plating
This sauce is pale, so the bowl should not be. A stone coloured bowl flattens it into one beige surface, while plain white or a dark glaze gives the mushrooms something to read against. Warm the bowls: walnut fat stiffens as it cools and turns a glossy sauce dull.
Twist a portion into the tongs and lower it into the centre so the strands settle into a low mound. Then go back for the mushrooms that fell to the bottom of the pan and set the best pieces on top, torn oyster caps facing upward. A mushroom ragù stirred flat looks like porridge.
Scatter the reserved crushed walnuts over the top, add the lemon zest from a height so it lands evenly, and finish with a little more Parmigiano. The zest is not decoration: a sauce built on nuts and fungi has no acidity of its own, and that lift keeps the last forkful as interesting as the first.
Professional Technique
Everything here depends on the dry sauté, the least intuitive step on the list. Mushrooms are roughly 90 percent water, and a pan that starts with oil seals the outside just enough that the water leaves slowly and pools, so they simmer in their own liquid and taste washed out. A dry pan on high heat drives it off fast, and the fat goes in only once the pan is dry again.
The walnut cream is an emulsion held together by bread rather than dairy or egg. Starch from the milk soaked crumb suspends the oil the blades release and keeps it from separating, which is why a walnut sauce made without bread breaks into a greasy slick the moment it meets heat. It is the principle behind salsa di noci, applied to a hot sauce.
The third point is treating the porcini liquor as a stock and not a flavouring. A cup carries more glutamate than the whole pan of fresh mushrooms, which is what gives a meatless ragù the savoury weight that usually comes from browned meat and bone. Filter it, because the grit is unforgiving, and add it early enough to reduce with the sauce.
Texture and Moisture Control
The sauce is a moisture problem in three stages. The fresh mushrooms give up water in the dry pan and must take it back before they are moved. Then the wine and the porcini liquor go in and reduce. Finally pasta water builds the emulsion. Skip the first stage and the mushrooms keep releasing liquid on the way to the table, thinning the sauce until it slides off.
Walnut fat behaves differently from butter and needs a lower temperature. Over direct heat the cream tightens and splits, leaving oil on the surface and a grainy paste beneath. Stir it in off the flame and let the heat already in the pasta warm it through. If the sauce looks tight, the answer is cooking water, not more fat.
The strands want to be a touch thinner than for a meat sauce, cooked to the same point: tender through with the faintest core left. With no rendered fat in the pan, the emulsion relies almost entirely on the starch the pici shed, so their cooking water matters more here than in any meat version.
Professional Mise en Place
The mushroom base and the walnut cream both hold well, so the sensible division is everything except the pasta on one day and the tossing on another.
Equipment and tools
Wide heavy pan, at least 11 inches, for the dry sauté and the tossing
Small blender or food processor for the walnut cream
Fine cloth or paper filter for the porcini liquor
Large wooden board, a bench scraper and a sharp knife
Trays dusted with semola and cloths to cover them
Tongs, a ladle and a fine grater for the Parmigiano and the zest
Prepared ahead
Mushroom ragù, up to 2 days ahead, refrigerated in a sealed container
Porcini soaked and their liquor filtered, on the day
Walnut cream, up to 2 days ahead, with a film of oil on the surface
Walnuts toasted and the garnish portion set aside separately
Pici, rolled up to 4 hours ahead, on semola under a cloth
Service setup
Ragù warm in the wide pan, loosened with a little broth
Walnut cream at room temperature beside the stove, never over heat
Water at a hard boil and salted before the pasta goes in
Cooking water reserved in a cup before draining
Bowls warmed, Parmigiano grated, zest and parsley ready
Chef Tips
Buy dried porcini loose and look at the slices. Pale, thick, intact pieces with visible pores are worth three times the crumbled dark dust in a packet, and the difference lands in the soaking liquor this sauce is built on.
Taste a walnut before you toast it. Walnuts go rancid quietly, and a batch left warm in a shop tastes faintly of old paint in a way no amount of garlic or Parmigiano covers. If they are bitter raw they will be worse in the cream.
Use three kinds of mushroom rather than one type in larger quantity. Cremini give body and colour, oyster caps the silky torn texture on top, porcini the savoury depth, and each covers a weakness the others have. A pan of one mushroom produces a sauce with a single note.
If the finished sauce tastes rounded but dull, the missing element is acid rather than salt. A few drops of white wine vinegar off the heat, or more lemon zest, sharpen every other flavour at once. Reach for that before more cheese.
Common Mistakes
Starting the mushrooms in oil. Fat in a cold pan slows the release of water, so the mushrooms simmer in their own liquid and never colour, and the sauce tastes thin however long it cooks. Sear them dry on high heat first and add the fat only once the pan has gone dry again.
Throwing away the porcini soaking water. That liquid holds most of the savoury concentration the dish has, and discarding it leaves a meatless ragù with nothing to stand on. Filter it through cloth and reduce it into the sauce.
Boiling the walnut cream. Held over direct heat the emulsion splits, the oil surfaces and the texture turns grainy. Add it with the pan off the flame and let the heat already in the pasta do the work.
Reaching for cream to bind it. Dairy cream flattens the sauce into something generic and buries the walnut, which is the whole reason this version exists. The bread and nut emulsion binds it perfectly well without the weight.
Forgetting the acid. Mushrooms and walnuts are savoury and fatty with no brightness of their own, and a sauce built entirely from them tires the palate by the third mouthful. Lemon zest at the end fixes it instantly.
Wine Pairing
Vernaccia di San Gimignano DOCG: The Tuscan white with the firmest structure, and the local choice, especially since half a glass goes into the pan. It finishes on a bitter almond note that runs alongside the walnut instead of fighting it, and its acidity cuts the nut oil and the Parmigiano together. Enough body to sit under a sauce this savoury without being erased.
Collio Friulano DOC: Friulano is the classic partner for anything walnut, because the grape itself carries a nutty, faintly bitter almond character that doubles the flavour rather than contrasting with it. Its broad texture suits an emulsion held together by bread and nut oil, and a touch of pear and field herb meets the thyme.
Orvieto Classico DOC: An Umbrian blend of Grechetto and Trebbiano that stays deliberately understated, which is its value against a sauce with this much savoury weight. Crisp apple and a light almond finish refresh the palate between forkfuls, and the modest alcohol keeps the meal from turning heavy.
Fiano di Avellino DOCG: From Campania, worth the detour for the hazelnut and smoke notes Fiano develops after a couple of years in bottle, which chime with toasted walnut and dried porcini. It has real weight and a waxy texture that stands up to the walnut cream, with enough mineral bite to keep the finish clean.
Alto Adige DOC Pinot Nero: The red option, and the only one that makes sense here. Mountain grown Pinot Nero is pale, light in tannin and full of forest floor and dried mushroom aromas that mirror the porcini directly. Serve it at 57°F (14°C) and it lifts the sauce rather than flattening it as a Sangiovese would.
Storage & Reheating
The mushroom ragù keeps sealed in the refrigerator for 2 days and freezes for 2 months, although oyster mushrooms soften on thawing, so the texture is better if you freeze the base and tear fresh ones in on reheating. Rewarm it in a wide pan over low heat with a spoonful of broth, never in a microwave, which turns the mushrooms leathery.
The walnut cream keeps refrigerated for 2 days under a film of olive oil, which stops the surface going grey. It thickens hard when cold, so bring it to room temperature and beat in a spoonful of warm water before it meets the pasta. Do not freeze it: the emulsion separates on thawing.
Uncooked pici hold on a semola dusted tray under a cloth for a day, or frozen on a tray until solid then bagged for a month and cooked from frozen with an extra minute. Dressed leftovers keep 2 days and reheat in a covered pan over low heat with a splash of water, tossed until the sauce comes back together.
Nutrition
Per serving, based on 4 portions:
Calories: 740 kcal
Total Fat: 38 g
Saturated Fat: 9 g
Trans Fat: 0.2 g
Unsaturated Fat: 27 g
Cholesterol: 30 mg
Sodium: 780 mg
Total Carbohydrates: 78 g
Fiber: 7 g
Total Sugars: 6 g
Added Sugars: 0 g
Protein: 22 g
Lactose: 1.1 g
Principal micronutrients: copper, selenium, potassium, riboflavin, vitamin D, magnesium
These figures are estimates. Most of the salt in the pasta water is discarded, so the real sodium depends on the final seasoning and on how much Parmigiano reaches the bowl.
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