Favorite Porcini Recipe

[AzRaeL]

I was given a large container of dried porcini. Sure i've searched the net and what i've got is mostly pasta and porcini recipes. Now I wonder what do you folks do with this little mushroom.

[madziast]

risotto, sauerkraut and mushroonm, add to soups and sauces, esp. a rich sauce for polenta, mmmm.... i pretty much add mushrooms to everything i can

[MaxH]

I was given a large container of dried porcini. Sure i've searched the net and what i've got is mostly pasta and porcini recipes. Now I wonder what do you folks do with this little mushroom.

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On a statistical basis, what I've done most often with these thngs (after pouring some boiling water over them, soaking for a while, straining the liquid thru a coffee filter and saving it for use, and cleaning the mushrooms of dirt and grit) has been

a wild-mushroom-pasta-gratinee in the Chez Panisse Pasta-Pizza-Calzone Cookbook (1984, ISBN 0394530942, readily available on the used market), a recipe mentioned just recently on the macaroni-cheese recipe thread on eGullet;

cooking them down with red wine and pan-fried sausages, a very simple, very effective idea I got from one of Marcella Hazan's two original Classic Italian Cooking books;

improvised wild-mushroom lasagnes (the soaking liquid is especially important here for intensifying the mushroom flavor).

Good stuff.

-- Max

(By the way, this is probably obvious but most of the good recipe sources are not online, as far as I know.)

[tsquare]

(By the way, this is probably obvious but most of the good recipe sources are not online, as far as I know.)

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Well, there is eGullet's recipe file, as well as epicurious. Not a bad place to start.

[phifly04]

Grind them to powder and use them as you would flour for coating say scallops,chicken,steak and so on ...........

[MaxH]

(By the way, this is probably obvious but most of the good recipe sources are not online, as far as I know.)

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Well, there is eGullet's recipe file, as well as epicurious. Not a bad place to start.

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Yes indeed, those are very positive suggestions. Recipes were even one of the seminal historical missions of Internet forums, in the earlier years before Berners-Lee introduced HTTP and HTML and the "Web" language in 1991, currently archived by Google here. A major split in the organization of public Internet forums in 1987 occurred over the subject of recipes. Recipes have been diligently posted since almost the first days of self-service public Internet forums (at UNC-CH with Steve Bellovin and associates in 1979). They may be one of the most constructive human uses of the Internet. I have posted a few of them myself, in the last 22 years. That being said, most of them are still in paper sources rather than online, so an online-only search can be limiting. That was my (limited) point. -- M.

[Suzanne F]

A great addition to braised chicken

[culinary bear]

Soak them in hot water, retain the liquor...

Heat XVOO in a pan, have your fresh tagliatelle cooking in plenty of boiling salted water. Add picked oregano to the oil, shake pan, add shrooms, heat through. Emulsify with a little of the reserved liquor. Season generously. Add cooked pasta, toss, add grated fresh reggiano, toss again, serve.

Looks, frankly, like a bowl of tapeworms. Eats divinely.

[AzRaeL]

Thanks! you folks are the best.

I have a passion for food that borders on obsession.

FoodNetwork to me is what ESPN is to most guys.

[divina]

I do a version of Fabio Picchi's soup from cibreo here in Florence.

Saute chopped shallots and saute in XVOO, add peeled cubed potato, saute.. add mushroons soaked adn cleaned as mentioned above. ( I don't use boile water as it extracts too much flavor from the mushroom, and I don't always use the water in my recipes)

When the shrooms etc have sauteed. add water , enough for soup!

salt to taste and cook until the potato is done.

I use the immersion blender and puree. Add a touch of milk to thin if you like.

Serve with grated parmesan cheese..and a lovely decorative drizzle of XVOO on top!

He varies this. serving yellow bell pepper soups, pumpkin soup..etc.. his version starts with the Soffritto,, finely minced equal parts of carrot onion and celery!

[Chufi]

my favorite dried porcini recipe:

Slice up potatoes for a potato gratin. Layer in a buttered dish. Between every layer of potato, put the following:

a dusting of chopped parsley

a sprinkling of very finely chopped shallots

some grated parmesan

some slivers of garlic

soaked porcini, chopped up

salt and pepper.

Instead of using cream for the gratin, use cream with some of the porcini soaking water (but 3/4 of the liquid should be cream).

Dot with butter and bake.

The potatoes and porcini are the stars here, but don't omit the parsley and shallot, they give the finished dish a great depth of flavor.

[fiftydollars]

Risotto is my favorite thing to do with dry porcinis. However, Mario Batali has a recipe where he grinds them into a powder and makes a paste that he uses on grilled rib-eyes... It's really good.

[victornet]

I would highly recommend Deborah Madison's mushroom, leek amd potato soup from the Greens Cookbook (which starts using the porcinis in her wild mushroom stock).

I've made it many times.

Some friends made a porcini pie once, but it was pretty intense, not as balanced as this soup.

[mrbigjas]

i make stuffed pork chops with them. rehydrate the porcini, chop, mix with bread crumbs/sauteed shallot, herbs. moisten with some of the mushroom soaking liquid or a little stock if you need to. let the stuffing cool, and stuff the pork chops. brown them, then bake till done. when they're done, make a pan gravy out of the drippings, some more shallots or garlic, white wine, and mushroom liquid and/or stock. enrich with cream if you want. SO GODDAMN GOOD.

[APPS411]

Porcini parmesaen bowties w/ walnuts and porscuitto

Rehydrate the porcinis overnight in warm water. Strain (reserving liquid) and chop porcinis. Reduce soaking liquid to concentrate. This is were the majority of the flavor lies. Reduce to 1/3 and add finely chopped pocinis. This chunky stock will keep in the fridge for a while. I make ice cubes w/ them and place in a ziplock for quick pasta.

Add a few scoops of the porcini mixture to a skillet and bring to med high heat. Add a touch of cream and some freshly grated parm to taste. Don't dilute the wonderful porcini flavor w/ too much cream. The sauce should be a light brown chocolate milk like color, not white. Reduce or add more parm or add pasta water to attain proper coating consistency.

Add bowties, cooked below al dente as they will cook additionally in the sauce. Toss to coat then add coursely copped walnuts and poscuitto.

Everytime I make a variety of pastas for friends, this one turns out to be the favorite. Enjoy.

[APPS411]

Porcini parmesaen bowties w/ walnuts and porscuitto

Rehydrate the porcinis overnight in warm water. Strain (reserving liquid) and chop porcinis. Reduce soaking liquid to concentrate. This is were the majority of the flavor lies. Reduce to 1/3 and add finely chopped pocinis. This chunky stock will keep in the fridge for a while. I make ice cubes w/ them and place in a ziplock for quick pasta.

Add a few scoops of the porcini mixture to a skillet and bring to med high heat. Add a touch of cream and some freshly grated parm to taste. Don't dilute the wonderful porcini flavor w/ too much cream. The sauce should be a light brown chocolate milk like color, not white. Reduce or add more parm or add pasta water to attain proper coating consistency.

Add bowties, cooked below al dente as they will cook additionally in the sauce. Toss to coat then add coursely copped walnuts and poscuitto.

Everytime I make a variety of pastas for friends, this one turns out to be the favorite. Enjoy.

[Kevin72]

Be sure to rinse them well before use and strain their liquid: they are gritty little suckers.

I second the recommendation upthread to grind them in a spice mill to a powder. Made porcini tagliatelle this fall and also used a little of the powder to make a porcini bechamel for a mushroom tart.

[chow guy]

Be sure to rinse them well before use and strain their liquid: they are gritty little suckers.

I second the recommendation upthread to grind them in a spice mill to a powder.  Made porcini tagliatelle this fall and also used a little of the powder to make a porcini bechamel for a mushroom tart.

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I also like to grind them for pasta or sauces and as a dustings for scallops.

I'll often do a quick mushroom sauce for my wife who is vegetarian. I reduce one of the boxed vegetarian potabello mushroom soups from the heathfood store by about a third. Then I hydrate the dried porcinis in some heated wine or sherry and add the shrooms and strained liquid then garnish with fresh chives or parsley. It's fast and tasty.

[Gastro888]

Be sure to rinse them well before use and strain their liquid: they are gritty little suckers.

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I strain my porcini soaking liquid through a coffee fliter. Gets all the grit out.

[MaxH]

Be sure to rinse them well before use and strain their liquid: they are gritty little suckers.

I second the recommendation upthread to grind them in a spice mill to a powder.

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Agreed about the grit problem. It is such a consistent problem with wild shrooms that I expected it would be a problem too when one firm came out several years ago with jars of ground mixed wild mushrooms and sure enough, grit and sand were powdered along with them. This made the stuff hard to use directly in powdered form, but for a flavoring I was able to stir it into some water (hot, for example) and leave to sit in a water glass for a couple of minutes, keeing an eye on it. The mineral grit, being densest, settles out of suspension first. Then the liquid and most of the wanted solids can be poured gently off, leaving a little in the glass.

-- Max

[Kevin72]

Agreed about the grit problem.  It is such a consistent problem with wild shrooms that I expected it would be a problem too when one firm came out several years ago with jars of ground mixed wild mushrooms and sure enough, grit and sand were powdered along with them.  This made the stuff hard to use directly in powdered form . . .

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Yeah, I haven't figured that problem out yet in grinding them to a powder. I carefully pick them from the bag, leaving the residue at the bottom, rather than dump the whole thing out into the spice mill, grit and all, but there's still that occasional hit of grit in the powder. I figure you can do a quick rinse or wipe with a damp towel, but then that gets them moist and harder to grind up.