Some recipes for funghi porcini

"Funghi porcini" is the Italian for the boletus mushrooms. In french they are called "cèpes". They look like this. Porcini are sold fresh or dried. Only in some particular period of the year you can find them fresh. The ones from Toscany, Liguria, and the region of Bordeaux are particularly good.

The following are some recipes for fresh porcini.

First of all, you must cook the porcini immediately (if you put it in the refrigerator they lose taste; if you don't they will get bugs). Cut them in medium-size pieces (say, 3-5 cm long) and cook it for a 5-10 minutes in a pan, medium-low heat, with a bit of olive oil and minced garlic. You can cook a bit the garlic in the oil before putting the mushrooms to enhance the flavor of the garlic. Add salt to taste.

Once they are cooked, you can do various things with them. You can also freeze them and use some months later, they keep quite well.

My favourite receipts are rather simple:

Risotto ai funghi porcini. Put the cooked porcini in a pan on medium heat, add Italian rice (Arborio or Ribe), let "savor" for 1 min, add about 200cl warm (boiling) broth, stir, wait until the broth is absorbed, add again 200cl broth, etc., until the rice is cooked. You can add some milk and butter at the end to make it more creamy (or maybe you can fresh cream, I never tried). Sprinkle with some minced fresh parley if you like.
Tagliolini ai funghi porcini. Put the cooked porcini in a large pan on low heat, add fresh cream. Cook in boiling water some fresh tagliolini (thin tagliatelle, of the kind "pasta all'uovo", i.e. pasta with eggs, they look like these). Put the cooked tagliolini in the pan and let "savor" for a minute. Sprinkle with some minced fresh parsley if you like.
Tagliolini alla cacciatora. (Tagliolini hunter style.) A variant of the recipe above, just cook some sausage meet in the pan before adding the porcini. The sausage meat can be replaced by the "farce de porc" that in France is used to do stuffed vegetables (and actually it's even better than sausage for this recipe). The latter is my husband's favorite recipe.

Enjoy :-)