Category Archives: porcini

Wild Mushroom Stuffed Brook Trout

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FISHING IS ALWAYS on the menu when we visit relatives in Colorado. Usually we pan-fry our trout, but with a haul of wild mushrooms gathered on a hike in the Gore Range the previous day, including oyster mushrooms and aspen boletes (known to locals as orange-caps), we decided a stuffed baked trout was the way to go.

A word about aspen boletes (Leccinum insigne): Most books and web sites list this species as edible. Coloradans regularly eat this common variety of porcini. However, the Colorado Mycological Society recommends caution. Every year the Rocky Mountain Poison Center receives complaints of gastro-intestinal distress following the ingestion of orange-caps, with some cases requiring hospitalization. In the Northwest there are similar complaints that derive from the consumption of Leccinum aurantiacum. I’ve talked to a mycologist who believes that a small percentage of the population at large—maybe just a few percent—is allergic to the genus Leccinum in general. Most people seem to eat these mushrooms without difficulty, and indeed, immigrants from mushroom-hunting cultures (e.g., Eastern Europeans) eat them with abandon. As with any new species of edible wild mushroom, it’s recommended that you nibble on just a little bit (cooked of course) to make sure you’re not allergic.

For this recipe it’s best to de-bone the trout, Here’s a helpful YouTube video.

2 pan-sized trouts, butterflied
2 pieces bacon
1/4 cup onion, diced
1/2 cup mushrooms, chopped
1 tbsp fresh thyme, chopped
1 heaping tbsp parsley, chopped
1 slice bread, toasted and crumbled
lemon for juice and garnish
salt and pepper to taste

Fry the bacon and remove from pan when crispy. Crumble bacon into a bowl. Saute onion in bacon fat a couple minutes over medium heat, then add mushrooms and cook for another four or five minutes, making sure mushrooms expel their moisture. Add thyme and cook for one more minute. Spoon onion-mushroom mixture into bowl with bacon and add bread crumbs. Mix together. Squeeze lemon juice over butterflied trouts and season with salt and pepper. Spread half the stuffing onto lower half of one trout; repeat with other trout. Fold over each trout like a sandwich and secure with toothpicks. Place on greased foil in a broiling pan and bake at 400 degrees for 15 minutes.

Fettucini with Porcini, Prosciutto & Tomato Cream Sauce

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YOU’LL WANT a good bottle of red wine for this one.

9 oz fresh fettucini
1 lb porcini, roughly cut
3 oz prosciutto, torn into pieces
2 plum tomatoes, cored and diced
2-3 cloves garlic, chopped
1 large shallot, diced
2 tbsp olive oil
1 splash vermouth
4 oz heavy cream
fresh parsley, chopped, for garnish
parmesan cheese for shaving over top
salt and pepper

1. Heat 1 tbsp olive oil in a large skillet over medium flame and add prosciutto, cooking for a minute or two, turning with tongs, careful not to burn.

2. Add shallot, garlic, and porcini, sautéing and stirring for another couple minutes. De-glaze with a splash of vermouth, then add tomatoes. Cook over medium heat for several minutes.

3. Add pasta to boiling water. Meanwhile lower heat to medium-low and stir in heavy cream. Season with salt and pepper to taste.

4. Plate fettucini, ladle over sauce, and garnish with thin shavings of parmesan and a few pinches of parsley. Hook up red wine IV drip. Serves 2 gluttons. Keep pillows nearby.

Pacific Cod with Porcini and Chard Saute

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I’M ALL ABOUT the dinner that looks gourmet but is cooked in the time it takes to get the ingredients out of the cupboard. Here’s a dish in which the fish isn’t really the meat—the mushrooms are. Spring porcini mushrooms are mild enough in flavor that you can prepare them in any number of ways, including, if I may be so bold, Asian fusion.

The cod I marinated in hot oil, sesame oil, and soy sauce for an hour, then tossed on the grill. Meanwhile I sliced up a few porcini buttons and sauteed them in peanut oil until nicely browned. After flipping the fish I picked a handful of Swiss chard from the garden and added it to the mushroom saute along with a splash of sesame oil and some chopped garlic. A splash of soy finished the sauté.

Porcini Every Day

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Eating fresh porcini is a treat, but you can experience the earthy goodness of bolete mushrooms throughout the year by drying some of your catch. If you’ve ever paid for a 1 oz package of dried porcini at the market then you know drying your own makes economical sense too.

For us West Coasters, spring porcini makes a case for drying because it’s abundant and it’s often wormy. Rather than tossing the wormy ones, I slice up those that aren’t too badly infested and cut away the parts riddled with holes. Any worms I miss will usually exit once they realize the gig’s up, and those that don’t, being mostly water, evaporate into nothingness during the drying process. Besides, most of my dried porcini gets pulverized in a blender for use in stocks and sauces, so I’m not too concerned about a few pinpricks of worm dust; we eat more insects in our salads.

Drying Porcini, Step by Step

1. Slice mushrooms into 1/4 inch thickness. Discard badly wormed out bits.

2. An electric food dehydrator is best for drying but there are alternatives. You can arrange the mushroom slices in a single layer on screen. I use an old window screen scavenged just for this purpose. Prop up the screen at the corners with books if necessary to increase airflow underneath. Place screen and mushrooms in a sunny room or outside and blast them with a portable fan. Depending on your climate, this may take a few days. Alternatively, you can place on a pan in an oven on low heat and leave the door open for air circulation; I’ve never tried this technique but others claim it works. A food dehydrator is best.

3. Very important. Make sure every last mushroom slice is thoroughly dried. Some pieces will snap in half; others will be bendy but if you rip in two the inside shouldn’t be at all moist. A single undried piece can spoil an entire batch with mold. On the other hand, don’t overdry or you’ll leach out the good flavor oils.

4. Store dried porcini carefully. My main foe is the indestructible kitchen moth, so I keep my porcini in glass mason jars with rubber-gasket lids that lock down. Insect pests can get into ziplock bags.

Like a fine wine, the longer you age your porcini, the more the earthy essence will be concentrated. But don’t wait too long! Like wine, dried porcini can spoil eventually. I try to use mine within five years or so.

Now you’ve got a taste of the woods to enjoy year-round. Reconstitute a handful of pieces for a pasta sauce, or pulverize and add to your favorite beef stock for an extra boost. I use dried porcini in any number of dishes, from Oxtail Gnocchi to Braised Chicken to Chanterelle Soup.

Speaking of bolete worms, this time around I noticed an interesting phenomenon. I used six books to prop up two screens side by side. One of the books, Bill Buford’s Heat appropriately enough, has a bright yellow dust jacket. The worms that crawled out of the mushrooms during the drying process all migrated to this colorful cover where they made their last stand in the sun. None of the other books exhibited evidence of worms. In fact, I’ve never actually seen worms escaping off their host mushrooms before, it’s just something I assumed happened under the cover of darkness. It’s as if they all made a break for the yellow book, thinking it salvation. Is this because the gills of old boletes are yellow? I have no idea, but I’ll be using Heat again.

Spring Porcini Salad

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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.

All Hail the Spring King

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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.

Nettle and Porcini Lasagna

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STINGING NETTLES and porcini make this lasagna a little less run-of-the-mill. 

9-12 lasagna noodles
32 oz ricotta
4 cups boiled stinging nettles
1 28 oz can diced tomatoes
1 medium onion, diced
3-4 cloves garlic, minced
1/2 pound fresh porcini (or button) mushrooms, sliced
1-2 oz dried porcini mushrooms, rehydrated in a cup of warm water
1 16 oz mozzarella
1/8 tsp nutmeg
olive oil

1. Saute onion and garlic in a few tablespoons of olive oil until tender, then push to one side of pan and add sliced mushrooms. When mushrooms have started to brown slightly, add tomatoes and stir. Simmer for 30 minutes, adding water as necessary. After 30 minutes, stir in rehydrated mushrooms and their liquid. Simmer another 30 minutes.

2. Meanwhile blanche nettles in boiling water for 2 minutes, remove, and wring out. Save water in pot. Chop nettles and mix with ricotta. Season with grated nutmeg.

3. Boil lasagna noodles in same pot (making use of those nettle nutrients) until al dente.

4. To make the lasagna: Smear a little sauce in a 9 X 13-inch oven-proof dish. Lay down 3-4 noodles and cover with half the nettle-ricotta mixture. Top with sauce and a third of the mozzarella. Repeat: noodles, nettle-ricotta, sauce, mozzarella. Cover with one more layer of noodles and the rest of the sauce and mozzarella.

5. Cover with foil and bake at 375 degrees for 30 minutes. Discard foil and bake another 10-15 minutes. Remove from oven and let stand 15 minutes before serving.

The Gnostic Nuances of Oxtail Gnocchi

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THE DEEP, EARTHY flavors of dried porcini are what take this oxtail ragu up a notch.

For best results make this at least a day in advance before serving. Overnight refrigeration intensifies and marries the flavors.

 

 

Oxtail Ragu with Porcini

2 lbs oxtails
2-3 oz dried porcini, pulverized
1 medium onion, finely chopped
1 carrot, finely chopped
1 celery rib, finely chopped
2 cloves garlic, minced
1/2 bottle white wine
2 tbsp tomato paste
several sprigs fresh thyme
2-3 dried bay leaves
olive oil
basil for garnish

1. Using a food processor, pulverize a handful of dried porcini (2-3 oz) into dust. Cover with warm water, about 2 cups. Let sit for 30 minutes.

2. Season oxtails with salt and pepper and dredge in flour. With a large pan over medium-high heat, brown in olive oil and then set aside.

3. Pre-heat oven to 320 degrees. Reduce burner heat to moderate and add more oil if necessary before sauteing onions, carrots, celery, and garlic. When soft and translucent, deglaze with wine. Stir in tomato paste.

4. Arrange oxtails in a dutch oven or other heavy, lidded cooking vessel. Tuck sprigs of thyme and bay leaves between and around meat. Add contents of saute pan and rehydrated mushrooms with their liquid. The oxtails should be immersed to halfway mark; if not, add water or stock. Cover and put in oven for four hours, turning occasionally.

5. Maintain braising level by adding water or stock. Meat is done when it’s fall-off-the-bone. Carefully remove meat and let cool. Also remove thyme stems and bay leaves. Next separate meat and discard bones and any large pieces of gristle. Use immersion blender to blend and thicken sauce. Return meat to pot and bring to simmer on stovetop for a half-hour or so until reaching desired consistency.

For the gnocchi I used 101 Cookbook’s How to Make Gnocchi Like an Italian Grandmother Recipe. 

A couple points about this recipe. I used organic Yukon Gold potatoes. Some have wondered why you peel the potatoes after boiling; while mine is not to reason why, I found the peeling easier at this stage than before boiling. The taters undressed without the slightest hint of coyness, dropping their gowns sometimes in a single peel. Also, the fork method of deconstructing the halves works perfectly well, and the difference between mashing (don’t) and simply grating without any lumps (do) will become obvious even to the newbie.

When it came time to mix in the egg and flour, I used slightly less beaten egg than called for in the recipe and slightly more flour. Also, I built a volcano out of the potato and poured the egg and flour into the crater. Keeping the chopping block well-sprinkled with flour from this point on is essential.

The gnocchi were light and scrumptious. I drizzled some olive oil on a plate, carefully arranged a dozen gnocchi, and ladled the oxtail ragu over the whole enterprise. The ragu juices mixed with the olive oil to form an appetizing orangish gravy on the bottom. I garnished the dish with chopped basil.

A Meal Fit for a King

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1 knob butter
1-2 shallots, diced
1-2 garlic cloves, minced
1 large king bolete, chopped
dry vermouth
salt and pepper
heavy cream
1 lb. pasta
parmesan for grating
parsley, chopped

1. Put a pot of water on the boil. Meanwhile, as it’s heating up, finely chop a couple shallots (or an equivalent amount of yellow onion if that’s what you have on hand) and saute in butter. Mince a clove or two of garlic and add to the saute. Chop up a large porcino or a few buttons and add to the saute, cooking for 5 minutes or so over medium-high and stirring occasionally. Season with salt and pepper.

2. Deglaze with a splash of vermouth, then reduce heat to medium-low and stir in heavy cream to taste. The pasta should be nearly done. Drain pasta and serve. Pour porcini cream sauce over pasta, then sprinkle generously with grated parmesan cheese and a pinch of chopped parsley.

Here are a few other king bolete recipes from previous posts:

The Admiral

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The admirable bolete, aka “Admiral” (Boletus mirabilis), is one of my favorites, for its beauty, its lively flavor, and its fleeting collectabilty. Rarely do I find one before the bugs.

Unlike the king bolete (Boletus edulis), which can be used in all manner of culinary ways, the admiral is probably best by itself, sliced and sauteed, an amuse bouche for the table. The taste of lemon is distinctive and usually requires something to balance it such as butter or soy sauce. That said, I’m told the lemony flavor is produced by a compound in the velvety “skin” of the mushroom’s pileus, or cap. Presumably one could peel this off and then use the admiral in any standard porcini recipe.

The admiral is a mushroom of damp Pacific Northwest forests. I generally find it in older hemlock stands with spongy moss carpets where it likes to fruit off nurse logs, and though it can get quite large, with a cap approaching the size of a salad plate, edible specimens are usually smaller.