Dinner in ten minutes: creamy avocado and mushroom pasta.

Due to the time pressures of a high-powered career and various domestic pressures such as wife and children, I used to try to cook a meal in the shortest possible time. I wrote about it in a post entitled the four-minute meal, a take on the four-minute mile. Heat was a mandatory factor, otherwise you could just eat cold pizza from the fridge.

The following recipe is fast and easy but doesn't approach four minutes. You'll need at least ten. Just make sure the pasta goes on first, because everything else can be done within its cooking time.

OK, pasta's on. Now peel and slice an onion and a garlic clove and put them in a pan with some olive oil on low heat. Slice some mushrooms, halve an avocado, remove the stone and slice and cross-hatch it. I do it in the skin and then carefully remove it. 

Now slosh some white wine into the pan and check that the onion and garlic are softening, not burning. Now put in the mushrooms, lid the pan and turn up the heat slightly to soften the mushrooms in the white wine. The pasta should be half-cooked by now. Give the mushrooms two minutes, and then put in the avocado and a cup of cream. Shake the pan to combine. High heat now. Keep agitating the pan.

Drain the pasta when done. Arrange in bowls. When the cream has reduced sufficiently, pour over pasta and add grated parmesan or equivalent and chopped parsley. 

Ten minutes if you don't count going out into the garden for the parsley. Or get one of the children to do it.