This mushroom tomato pasta is a vegetarian meal that everyone will agree on! Perfectly roasted cherry tomatoes and mushrooms combine with feta cheese to make this incredibly luxurious and filling meal.
There’s no two ways about it, this recipe takes a little time and care, but if you have an evening where you can potter around, chop, open and close the oven a few times, you will be rewarded.
It isn’t hard, it doesn’t require any technical skill, and you don’t even need the best ingredients, it just takes time.
We roast our mushrooms and tomatoes on a low-ish temperature, so the oven is going for an hour, but the way this recipe is paced, you can overlap a lot of your prep with that cooking time which really helps.
Cooking low and slow, in a flavorful marinade, can also help compensate if you’re using the less expensive tomatoes and mushrooms. Feel free to buy from the budget range if that suits you, because the recipe will help to compensate.
So we’ve got:
Crisp, meaty, herby roasted mushrooms with a lemony kick
The lemon is crucial! It brings the dish to life.
Caramelised and intensely sweet cherry tomatoes in their own sticky sauce
The tomatoes are roasted in garlic, olive oil and balsamic vinegar. They turn jammy and form a sticky sauce which gives the dish lots of flavor.
And combining them is where the magic happens!
We add some cheese to the pan, which grabs onto the tomato juices and forms a little saucy coating for the pasta, and finally a bit of feta gets mixed through and adds some extra salty, cheesy goodness.
Top Tips
- Please note the 15 minutes prep time I suggest in the recipe card is the time it takes you before you start anything cooking – the time it takes you to prep the tomatoes which go in before anything else happens. After that, there is more prep but it overlaps with the cooking time.
- Consider the cheese quantities a minimum. You could definitely add more of both cheeses if you want to make this less subtle and more decadent.
- The lemon on the mushrooms is, for me, important. But if you aren’t that into lemony flavors, feel free to reduce it a little. Add some extra feta to compensate for the loss of flavor.
More Pasta Ideas with Cherry Tomatoes
Roasted Mushroom & Tomato Pasta
Ingredients
- 350 g (12 oz) dried penne pasta
- 50 g (½ cup) pecorino, parmesan or other Italian hard cheese, see notes
- 50 g (â…“ cup) feta cheese, crumbled
- 1 handful fresh parsley leaves, chopped
- pasta cooking water
For the cherry tomatoes
- 650 g (1.5 lb) cherry tomatoes, halved
- 4 Tbsp olive oil
- 1 Tbsp balsamic vinegar
- 1.5 Tbsp honey
- 2 large cloves garlic
For the mushrooms
- 4 large portobello mushrooms, sliced
- 4 Tbsp olive oil
- 4 large cloves garlic, minced
- 2 Tbsp fresh thyme
- ½ lemon, zested and juiced
Instructions
- Preheat the oven to 160C / 320F
- Prepare the tomatoes. Make the marinade by whisking together the olive oil, balsamic vinegar, garlic and honey. Scatter the tomatoes in a deep baking tray or casserole dish and pour the marinade on top. Use a spatula to mix everything together and ensure all of the tomatoes are coated. Place in the oven for 1 hour. Set the oven's alarm – watching the countdown will be useful for timing the next steps.
- Once the tomatoes are in the oven, prepare the mushrooms. In a large bowl, toss together the mushroom slices with the olive oil, garlic, thyme, and the zest from the lemon (just the zest – the juice will come later) Scatter onto a baking tray or sheet pan and add them to the oven for the last 30 minutes of the cooking time. Move the tomatoes to the lower shelf and put the mushrooms on the top shelf.
- Cook the pasta. 15 minutes before the oven ingredients finish, get your pasta boiling according to package instructions. When it's finished, reserve a cupful of the pasta's cooking water. Then drain the pasta and return it to the pan.
- Remove the tomatoes and mushrooms from the oven. Squeeze the juice from the 1/2 lemon you zested over the mushrooms.
- Add the tomatoes (making sure to scrape out all the juices in the pan too), mushrooms and parmesan to the pasta and toss to combine. Add a little pasta cooking water to help create a sauce from the tomato juices and parmesan. The amount you need will just depend how much the tomato juices and marinade have thickened and cooked away so just pour in a tablespoon's worth at a time until you like the look of it.
- Add the parsley and the crumbled feta and toss through.
- Serve into bowls and top with additional parmesan and parsley if desired.
I am making this and I hope it turns out but I have to say, the way the directions are written, I’ve already made mistakes. The olive oil for the tomatoes says 4 Tbs divided but no mention is made as to where that is divided. Then there is 4 more Tbs for the mushrooms. So, is that 4 Tbs total for the whole dish? 8? And the directions for the lemon should not be included in the mushroom directions. I just put the zest and the juice in the mushrooms. I know you are supposed to read the entire recipe before you start so my mistake but this is poorly written. Hope it’s good!
Hi Kate, thank you so much for the feedback. It’s very useful. I am so sorry for the experience you had making this recipe and I agree that the way the recipe was written wasn’t good enough. I have made some quick edits to the recipe, added the process photos into the recipe card for what that’s worth, and I am going to take another look at it again when I have more time tomorrow. To your specific points: 1) The word “divided” should not have been in there, that was a mistake. I’d originally written the ingredient list without dividing it into sections, and when I divided it into sections I should have removed the word “divided”. I have fixed that now. 2) I added a note to make clearer that the lemon juice needed to be held back for a later point. It shouldn’t have made much difference to the result, it will have just dulled the effect a little. I hope the end result worked out for you and you were able to enjoy your dinner despite the frustrations in the process?