PERHAPS THE MOST enduring way to eat spring porcini is grilled. Unlike fall porcini, which herald the coming of winter and hearty meals cooked indoors, the spring porcini of the West Coast fruits just in time for the kick-off of the barbecue season.

Arranged on a bed of fresh spring greens picked moments earlier, this porcini salad was the perfect accompaniment to a dinner of grilled Copper River sockeye and local Washington asparagus. To prepare the mushrooms for grilling, I brushed on a marinade of olive oil, garlic, and chopped herbs from the garden (thyme, oregano, parsley), then set them immediately on the hot grill, cooking over medium heat until the porcini were lightly browned on both sides. A dressing of olive oil, cider vinegar, and honey finished the salad.

This is a similar presentation to chef Keith Luce’s recipe for Roasted Porcini with Honey & Thyme in my article on “The Poor Man’s Steak” in the October ’08 issue of Seattle Metropolitan magazine, except rather than cooking the porcini in a stuffy kitchen you can hang outside with friends by the barbecue drinking a beer and admiring the porcini as it browns up.

Mushrooms & Marinade

1/2 lb fresh medium-sized porcini buttons, sliced 1/4 inch thick
3 tbsp olive oil
1 tbsp fresh thyme, chopped
1 tbsp fresh oregano, chopped
1 tbsp fresh parsley choped
salt and pepper, to taste

Whisk together marinade ingredients. Slice porcini, brush on marinade, and immediately place on hot grill over medium heat, turning periodically and brushing on more marinade to keep moist. Grill until nicely golden brown, but not dark brown. With tongs, remove from grill and arrange over tender spring greens

Dressing

Equal parts olive oil and cider vinegar. Season with salt and pepper. Add honey to taste. Drizzle over porcini and greens. Finish with a few shavings of romano. The sweetness of honey combined with the sharpness of romano makes for an ideal pairing for the meaty porcini mushrooms, and the warmth of the porcini contrasted with the cool, crispy salad greens is a match for the season. Enjoy outside with a glass of rosé and good friends, as we did.

Some may call it heresy, but I’ll say it anyway: I sometimes prefer picking spring porcini to morels. Yes, finding morels is one of the great pleasures of foraging—and eating them is an unparalleled culinary treat. But hunting spring porcini means venturing deeper into more pristine wilderness at a time when the wildflowers are in full bloom and the songbirds in full throat.

As with morels, you need an understanding of habitat conditions, tree composition, slope aspect, and so on, making a porcini hunt a challenging puzzle to figure out. I like to spend a few days roaming on the sunny side of the mountains, camping and hiking while I load up on a supply of spring kings to last me through the year.

Usually I’ll start in the lower valleys and work my way up in elevation. Sometimes you don’t see the mushrooms at all; you need to look for a bump in the duff—affectionately known to hunters as a “mushrump”—that signals the growth of a bolete underneath. These are the ones you want, the firm young buttons. They’re also more likely to be bug-free than the older fully emerged mushrooms flapping in the breeze. Which brings me to one of the sad facts of porcini hunting: be prepared to toss a lot of mushrooms. Trim the end or slice in half and you’ll know right away: more than a few will be riddled with worm holes. I try to salvage what I can to dry for later; unblemished buttons get cooked fresh.

Until recently, picking spring porcini mushrooms was like waking up in the morning next to a stranger. A beautiful, nameless stranger. How embarrassing not to know a name! A few proposed appellations floated around the mushroom scene, with none sticking. Some called the mushroom a spring variant of Boletus edulis, others Boletus pinophilus. But the latter was a European species that didn’t seem to fit, and the former is only the most famous bolete of them all, the king bolete, a fall species that differs from its vernal cousin in a few dramatic ways. So most of us just referred to them as “spring kings” and left it at that.

Now David Arora, of Mushrooms Demystified fame, has offered a new name to put an end to the confusion. Boletus rex-veris (from the Latin, meaning “spring king”) would give the mushroom new species status.

Spring kings differ from true king boletes (B. edulis) in a few striking ways. Most obvious is the timing; spring kings usually start fruiting on the east slopes of the Cascade and Sierra Nevada mountains a few weeks after the morels have started. In my area this means mid-June most years. They fruit underground and often don’t burst through the duff until fully mature, and they can also be found in clusters, sometimes with several specimens fruiting together from the same clump.

Some might argue that the spring king is not quite the equal of Boletus edulis, but it has good porcino flavor and can be quite firm and crunchy in the button stage. A few buttons can transform a simple camp dinner into something worthy of the best restaurants.

Camper’s Special Pig & Porcini Feast

3-4 porcini buttons, trimmed and sliced 1/4 -inch thick
5-6 fresh morels, halved
1/2 lb Italian sausage, sliced
2 slices quality bacon, diced
1/2 lb asparagus, cut into thirds
1 cup rice
butter
cream
parmesan cheese
fresh herbs
wild violets for garnish

1. Make rice (or noodles). When done, add butter, cream, parmesan, and fresh herbs to taste for creamy texture. Keep covered.

2. While rice is cooking, saute diced bacon in a dab of butter until crispy. Set aside, leaving bacon fat in pan. Saute mushrooms, turning periodically, until browned. Set aside with bacon. Add sausage to pan and brown, then add asparagus and cook a few more minutes. Return bacon and mushrooms to pan for another minute or two. Serve over rice, then repair to cozy camp chair with a cold, hearty brew and a blazing fire to keep the wild animals at bay.