>> Let's make a farm to table connection right now for you, your family or friends.

Lots of you who connect with us on Facebook or send along emails to our America's Heartland website tell us how much you enjoy the special recipes from Sharon Profis in our Farm to Fork segments.

I think it reflects how much food and food issues have taken on a viral voice these days.

Well, Sharon's back in the kitchen.

This time with flavorful mushroom pasta.

♪♪ >> If you're looking to take a break from meat, mushrooms are the ideal substitute.

They've got a meaty texture, they're savory, and they're willing to take on just about any flavor you throw at them.

♪♪ So what I've got here for our wild mushroom pasta are three different types of mushrooms.

So, cremini, which I'm chopping right now, and you'll see I'm not removing the stems, because cremini mushrooms actually don't have very woody stems, so you can actually eat them.

I'm also using oyster mushrooms, which have a more delicate flavor, and porcini mushrooms.

With these porcini mushrooms, I had to reconstitute them because they were dry.

And to do that, I put them in a bowl of hot water and let them sit there for about twenty minutes.

Then I actually reserved that water, and you'll see why in just a few minutes.

But first we need to prepare the rest of our components, so, leeks, which have a nice delicate flavor that goes really well with mushrooms.

And of course, garlic.

>> Mushrooms and garlic are a great combination.

So our prep is done, and now it's time to head to the stove.

So the first thing we want to do is sauté the mushrooms.

>> Now, to the olive oil I'm going to add some butter, just so that I can get the high cooking temperature from the olive oil but that flavor of the butter.

The first mushrooms I'm going to add are the cremini mushrooms, because they're a little meatier and they'll require a little bit more cooking time.

So the creminis have browned a bit, now we'll add our oysters and porcinis, now we'll remove these, they reduced a ton.

Put them in a bowl, and now it's time to prep our leeks and garlic, so I'll lower the heat a bit, add some more olive oil, throw in those leeks.

And I can hear my water's boiling for our pasta.

So I'm going to add pappardelle pasta, which is a wider pasta, and I like to go with a wider pasta like pappardelle or fettuccine, because it allows the mushrooms to shine and boil them until they're al dente, not completely soft, because we're going to finish cooking them here in this pan with the mushroom and the leeks.

>> Our leeks look good, they're picking up some of that flavor from the mushrooms we sautéed in there, hit it with a little salt, now let's get these mushrooms back in.

And now we have to spice this dish.

♪♪ I mentioned that there was a reason why I saved that porcini mushroom liquid.

>> First I'm going to add a little flour, because it's time to build our sauce, so once the flour has coated these ingredients, it's time to add that liquid from the reconstituted porcini.

So I've got half of that, plus chicken stock.

>> And once that simmers it'll thicken because of the flour that we added.

So our sauce has thickened, it's kind of like a gravy now.

And now it's time to add the pasta.

We brought in some of that pasta water to further enhance this sauce.

>> We're adding two types of cheese.

We've got fontina, which is a great melting cheese, and parmesan cheese.

Our wild mushroom pasta looks good, and now it's time to plate it.

I could eat this right this second, but I do want to add a few finishing touches to it.

But before I do that, let's talk about portabella mushrooms.

These are some of the biggest mushrooms you'll find in grocery stores.

First I'm going to put some slits in these, and by adding these slits they're going to soak up a little bit more of the marinade we're going to make.

Now we'll take each portabella and coat it in this mixture, and we'll let them sit for about ten, fifteen minutes so they can really absorb that flavor.

Remember, mushrooms will take just about any flavor you give them and this is going to be delicious.

Our portabellas have soaked up all of those delicious spices and that olive oil, and now it's time to grill them on our cast iron.

>> So if you have a barbecue or a grill at home, these go great on that too.

But if you're trying to make dinner in a pinch, and all you've got is a stove-top, this will work.

So add a little bit of olive oil, then we'll add our portabellas straight to the pan.

We'll give them about four to five minutes on each side, flip them halfway through, and they'll be good to go.

Nice and dark brown, you can see they shrunk a little bit, but not quite as much as the smaller varieties do.

And now, they're ready to be put in a burger, you can slice them up and put them in tacos, or you can eat them as is, as a side dish.

Now I mentioned we had one final finishing touch for the pasta.

So what I want to do there is add a little bit of fresh parsley, I'll also add more cheese, and for a garnish, a little sprig of thyme.

We've cooked with four types of mushrooms today, oyster, porcini, cremini, and of course, the king of the mushrooms, portabella.

And with so many varieties to choose from, mushrooms make for a great meatless meal.

♪♪ >> Take your pick: There are several thousand varieties of mushrooms growing in the United States, but only a few hundred are thought to be "safely" edible.

And a word about "toadstools".

The word was once used interchangeably by some cultures in identifying certain mushrooms.

Today, the word "toadstool" is often used to describe examples of "poisonous" mushrooms