Wild Indian: Stinging Nettle Paneer & Porcini Chana Masala

Sometimes a kitchen experiment yields better results than you ever imagined, and you feel like Gene Wilder in Young Frankenstein. Happily, my recent creation neither ran amok through the neighborhood nor incited a pitchfork mob—though it did get a wild applause from my dinner guests.

I'm talking about my Stinging Nettle Paneer. The dreaded stinging nettle, as most of us have known since childhood, is a monstrous weed. It's invasive and hard to eradicate, and woe to those who try to drive it from civilization, because the nasty barbs pack a painful wallop. On the other hand, with a little love and understanding, the nettle becomes an ideal food. It's one of the first greens of spring (late winter for many of us) and loaded with nutrients.

Most people I know who like Indian cuisine have a special place in their hearts for Saag Paneer, the creamy spinach curry with fried cheese. After all, spinach is good for us and even a decadent presentation feels somehow virtuous. Try this recipe with stinging nettles and you'll simultaneously welcome the weed and never feel quite the same about Saag Paneer again.

Substitute stinging nettles for spinach? Really? Believe me, you'll wonder whether this dish was originally invented with the belligerent weed in mind. The nettles leave the spinach in the dust. They're so bright in flavor, with a wild sweetness that goes perfectly with the Indian spices. My dinner guests were blown away and so was I. This dish goes to the top of the list of stinging nettle recipes.

Stinging Nettle Paneer

3/4 lb paneer, cut into cubes
1 large onion
3-4 cloves garlic
1 4-inch thumb of ginger, peeled
2 tbsp vegetable oil, plus extra for frying paneer
3-4 cardamom pods, crushed
1/2 tsp cumin seeds
1/4 tsp ground cinnamon
1/8 tsp ground cloves
1-2 plum tomatoes, diced
20 oz boiled nettles, drained
1/2 tsp turmeric
1 tsp ground cumin
1 tsp ground coriander
1 heaping tsp garam masala
1 tsp black pepper
1-2 tsp salt
1 cup, more or less, heavy cream or yogurt or a mix
cilantro for garnish

1. In a food processor, pulverize the onion, garlic, and ginger into paste.

2. Over medium heat, saute paste in oil for a few minutes in heavy-bottomed saucepan. Add cumin seeds, cardamom, cinnamon, cloves, and tomatoes, and cook for a minute or two, stirring occasionally.

3. Squeeze out excess water in boiled nettles. You'll have a clump about the size of a baseball. Chop up by hand or with a food processor; I like mine well chopped, but not overly pulverized.

4. Add nettles to pan, along with tumeric, cumin, coriander, garam masala, black pepper, and salt. Stir together well.

5. Meanwhile fry paneer cubes in a little oil until lightly browned, then add to nettle mixture just before serving.

6. Finish over low heat with heavy cream or yogurt to desired consistency. Garnish with fresh cilantro.

***

I've been working through my store of frozen wild mushrooms all winter. With spring porcini season around the corner, it seemed like a good time to use up the freezer supply and make room for a new batch. Mushrooms work well in any number of Indian curries; I especially like their addition to this Chana Masala, where they provide an added textural dimension, not to mention mushroomy flavor.

For this dish I turned to Michael Natkin's recipe over at Herbivoracious for the spice regime. Toasting your spices in oil is a traditional way to extract full flavor, but you want to be extra careful not to burn the spices. The toasted black mustard seeds, in particular, are a must.

Porcini Chana Masala

1/2 pound porcini mushrooms (or cremini), roughly chopped
1 can (14 oz) chickpeas, drained
1 medium onion
3-4 cloves garlic
1 4-inch thumb fresh ginger, peeled
2 tablespoons vegetable oil
2 teaspoons black mustard seeds
1 teaspoon fennel seeds
1 teaspoon cumin seeds
1 teaspoon coriander seeds
1 can (14 oz) diced tomatoes, drained
1 teaspoon ground turmeric
1/4 teaspoon ground cinnamon
1/8 tsp ground cloves
1/4 tsp cayenne pepper
1 tbsp lemon juice
1 tsp salt
1 tbsp brown sugar (optional)
1 cup (or more) water, stock, cream
cilantro for garnish

1. With a food processor make a paste with onion, garlic, and ginger.

2. Heat oil over medium heat in a large skillet. Add black mustard, fennel, cumin, and coriander seeds, and toast until mustard seeds start to pop (about 30 seconds or so). Note: do not overcook spices in oil or the curry will be bitter. Immediately add paste and tomatoes. Cook until liquid evaporates and mixture begins to brown.

3. In a separate pan, saute mushrooms in a little oil or butter until lightly browned. Add to skillet along with chickpeas. (I used previously sauteed and frozen porcini, and added directly after thawing.)

4. Add turmeric, cinnamon, cloves, cayenne pepper, lemon juice, salt, and a cup or so of water if necessary.

5. Cook uncovered over medium-low heat for 15 minutes. Adjust seasonings.

6. I finished my curry with a tablespoon of brown sugar and a half can (about a cup) of coconut milk, for a slightly sweeter curry. Garnish with fresh cilantro.

Cooking Indian at home can seem like a recipe for failure. All those spices! If you're new to Indian cuisine, the first step is to visit your local spice store. You'll want to have the basics: turmeric, cumin seeds, cardamom pods, ground coriander, garam masala, and so on. The amount of spices and seasonings will be overwhelming at first, but a little practice and before long you'll be making your own adjustments to once-obscure seeming spices in a given recipe based on personal preference.

Last Ditch Chanterelle Soup

Chanterelle season is coming to a close here in Washington State. Though we have yet to see a killing frost in Seattle, fall rains are transforming the chanties into big floppy, waterlogged monstrosities.  The other day I found some twice the size of my fist.

This time of year it pays to locate microclimates free of frost where chanterelles have enough cover to keep relatively dry. Even so, moisture from ground-soaking rains will be absorbed into the fruiting bodies and they'll balloon into what the commercial pickers call flowers, with tattered edges and deep vase-like caps (see photo at right). Many a neophyte mushroom picker has been overjoyed to find such huge specimens in the woods only to wrinkle a nose at the way they cook up slimy in the pan.

Here's what you do with soggy chanterelles.

First, choose your equipment wisely. Use a bucket or basket in the woods. A lidded bucket is best. If you're concerned about spreading spores, drill holes in the bottom of the bucket. The point is to have a solid receptacle and keep forest litter out. A soft-bodied receptacle such as a canvas bag allows for too much jostling, and a moisture-trapping plastic bag is just plain bone-headed. 

Second, brush off the mushrooms carefully after picking and make sure you have a clean cut stem. This time of year I only high-grade when I'm picking chanterelles, which means I pick the very best and leave the rest. I look for smaller and firmer ones. Most of the flowers I ignore unless I find a dry one. A few overly wet mushrooms can infect your whole batch.

Third, if you have a long drive, take care of your mushrooms en route. Empty them into a  newspaper-lined basket or box. When you get home, immediately spread the chanterelles over newspaper so they have a chance to breathe. Change the newspapers if necessary. It may take a few days to allow excess moisture to evaporate. I'm not talking about dehydrating them, just getting them into decent cooking shape.

One problem with drying your chanterelles over a couple days is that I suspect some of the flavor leaches out. With this in  mind, another option for soggy chanterelles is to cook them right away—but be warned, they will cook up slimy. On the other hand, I have an excellent recipe to neutralize the slime factor and make the most of the intense flavor that develops in large, mature chanterelles.

Cream of Chanterelle Soup

This is nearly identical to an earlier recipe I posted, with one major exception: the immersion blender, one of the great deals in kitchen gadgets. By blending the soup you get rid of any unpalatable chunks of slimy mushroom. The dried porcini is not absolutely necessary, but it's the secret weapon in any good mushroom soup.

6 tbsp butter, divided

1 med onion, diced


1 lb fresh chanterelles, diced


3 oz. dried porcini, rehydrated in 2 cups warm water


1/4 cup flour


4 cups beef stock


1/4 tsp white pepper


1/8 tsp ground nutmeg


salt to taste


1 cup or more heavy cream



1. Melt half the butter in a large pot. Add onions and cook over medium heat until caramelized.

2. Meanwhile pulverize porcini into dust with food processor and rehydrate in a bowl with warm water.

3. When onions are nicely caramelized add chanterelles and remaining butter, raise heat to high, and cook 5 minutes or so, stirring, until mushrooms have expelled their moisture. Cook off some of the liquid. The time required for this step will vary depending on how moist the mushrooms are. They should be slightly soupy before continuing to the next step.

4. Lower heat to medium and blend in flour with sauteed mushrooms and onions. Pour in beef stock slowly, stirring. Add porcini stock.

5. Bring to boil, then reduce to a low simmer. Add spices. Use an immersion blender to puree soup or blend in a food processor. The soup should be smooth and creamy.

6. Lower heat and add cream before serving.

Optional but highly recommended: In a separate pan, saute black trumpet mushrooms, chanterelles, or other wild mushrooms in butter for garnish and added texture. If you can get your hands on black trumpets, by all means do so. They taste a lot like chanterelles on steroids and add exceptional flavor to the soup.

Serves 4 - 6

I've seen plenty of Chanty Soup recipes out there on the Interwebs that use exotic ingredients and techniques. This recipe is quick, easy, and delicious—and it highlights the main event, the mushrooms! You can make a complicated soup if you'd like. Then try this one.

Porcini and Eggplant Parmesan

I was on the Oregon Coast last weekend—Rockaway Beach, to be exact—and can report that the coastal porcini north of Tillamook are on the way out. The beach pick is definitely over in Washington, for that matter. But as you move down the coast into California weather patterns change. A soaking rain in Mendocino a couple weeks ago kicked their season into gear and we should be hearing favorable fungi forecasts from places like Salt Point State Park any day now.

The point is, even if your own region is at flood stage or under a blanket of snow, someone is enjoying wild mushrooms in another part of the country. So, while I roasted the last of my Washington porcini the other night, it is with a sense of vicarious pleasure that I offer this outstanding recipe to my mushroom-hunting brethren in California, who I plan to join at the end of the month for a week of picking and roaming.

I use Marcella's Eggplant Parmesan recipe as a guideline. It's decadent, with plenty of frying in oil. If that's not your thing...well then, move along, nothing to see here.

1 large eggplant, sliced 1/4-inch thick lengthwise
1-2 large king boletes, sliced 1/4-inch thick lengthwise
flour
oil for frying
marinara sauce
1 lb mozzarella cheese, grated
1/2 cup grated parmesan cheese
fresh basil
salt and pepper
spaghetti

1. Heat oil in a large, deep-sided pan or skillet. Dredge eggplant and mushroom slices in seasoned flour. You may need to immerse mushroom slices in water before flouring. Fry in batches until golden, then remove to paper towels. (Note: Marcella recommends sprinkling eggplant slices with salt prior to frying so they release moisture; your call.)

2. Meanwhile prepare marinara sauce. You can take a shortcut and use a 28-oz can of store-bought sauce or make your own. We make our own simple red sauce by sautéing chopped garlic in olive oil, adding a 28-oz can of crushed tomatoes plus herbs, and simmering until the sauce attains desired taste and consistency. Add water as the sauce cooks down, and a pinch or two of sugar if necessary.

3. Grease a suitable baking dish. Line the bottom with a single layer of fried eggplant. Spoon over a third of your red sauce and top with half the mozzarella and a third of the parmesan. Dot with leaves of fresh basil. Repeat the layering, this time with all your porcini followed by another third of the red sauce, the rest of the mozzarella, another third of parmesan, and more fresh basil. Complete the final layer with the rest of your eggplant followed by the remaining red sauce and parmesan.

4. Bake for 30 minutes at 400 degrees. Remove from oven and allow to cool for several minutes.

Serve over spaghetti.

The Delivery

In my ongoing effort to be a commercial mushroom gadfly—or maybe just a fly in the ointment—I hung out with the fellas at Foraged and Found Edibles the other day while they packed up a couple dozen restaurant shipments and made deliveries.

It was a relatively quiet day. When I arrived at the warehouse (the owner's basement), Jonathan and Shane were busy sorting and cleaning mushrooms. Order by order, they packed chanterelles, porcini, and other mushrooms into cardboard flats and weighed them. A fan in the corner dried porcini and watercress soaked in a washbasin.

An hour later the packing was done and it was time to make deliveries. Jeremy, owner of Foraged and Found (pictured with a stack of baskets) owns a fleet of three Astro vans for the purpose, all of them used and cheap. He beats these vans like rented mules on the logging roads of the Pacific Northwest, but not before squeezing a couple hundred thousand miles out of each one, averaging more than a 100,000 miles a year.

Jonathan would cover east side restaurants for this delivery; Shane had the city. I hopped in with Jonathan, a CIA (NYC) graduate and former sous chef. Our first stop was his old employer, the Herbfarm in Woodinville, Washington, one of the Northwest's most celebrated restaurants. I had the good fortune of eating there last spring with my food blog pals Hank Shaw, Holly Heyser, and Matt Wright. The Herbfarm doesn't serve lunch, so the atmosphere was relaxed. Owner Ron Zimmerman came out to greet us (pictured taking possession of his beloved fungi at top of post). Right now he's doing his popular annual Mycologist's Dream menu and his order was both the biggest and most diverse, including chanterelles, yellowfoots, matsutake, both #1 and #2 porcini, a cauliflower mushroom, saffron milkcaps, hawkswings, and man-on-horseback mushrooms. Ron picked through the mushrooms with a knowing hand. We made some friendly chitchat and then headed off.

Next was Cafe Juanita, a perennial favorite on the north shore of Lake Washington in Kirkland. Chef-owner Holly Smith won a James Beard Award in 2008 and just seeing her face light up at the sight of a 10-pound bag of wild watercress was worth the trip. She teased out a strand and munched it approvingly.

Our last stop of the day put these first two deliveries in stark relief. The cook looked stressed out and annoyed at our presence for some reason that was never articulated. "How's it going?" Jonathan said, trying to be friendly. "Busy!" the cook snapped. I have two children under 11, so I know "acting out" when I see it. It's not a pretty sight in an adult. The cook slapped his dishrag on the table and grabbed Jonathan's receipt book, which he slammed against the wall before signing for the goods, then handed it back without a word. He kicked his new box of watercress to one side and had someone take away the mushrooms.

So much for fresh local ingredients. Some people are in the wrong line of work. Jonathan told me one of the hardest parts of his job is trying to educate clients who don't get the grading system. Even well known and long-standing restaurants don't always understand that #1 porcini and matsutake buttons will be varying sizes, not always cute and petit. "It's not as if mushrooms are grown like tomatoes in a mold," he said. "They're wild."

That's the point, but sometimes people want their wild ingredients to behave like conventional supermarket produce, domesticated and submissive. For years now a variety of cranks and schemers have tried to figure out the secrets of ectomycorrhizal fungi in order to grow them like a crop. Let's hope they fail.

The Ukrainian Connection

You might not see these people around town. They stick together and avoid attracting attention. But in your local mushroom patch you're sure to find them. Eastern Europeans, that is. Poles and Czechs, Russians and Ukrainians, many of them recent immigrants in the years following the dissolution of the Soviet bloc. They have a long tradition of scouring the woods of their homelands for edible fungi.

Mushrooms are often thought of as basically nutrient-free. This is not the case. Fungi can boast a number of important nutrients, including protein, and while a meal of mushrooms isn't equivalent to a steak dinner, to an Old World peasant not that long ago it might have been the difference between making it through the winter and starvation.

No wonder Eastern European fungal folkways have been handed down over the centuries—and they're alive and well in North America.

There's a mushroom patch that I frequent in the mountains east of Seattle. Actually, it's more of a huckleberry patch, but sometimes I'll pick mushrooms when I'm there. Every October I see the Eastern Europeans parked in the many turnouts along the forest road that leads to it. They're in search of boletes, especially Boletus edulis, which they call the "white mushroom" as well as a number of other species in that family that most recreational mushroom hunters rarely consider for the table. They vacuum up the many slippery jacks and scaber stalks of the forest.

Last year I happened on a troop of them in the bush and I wish I had been able to get some clandestine photos. They looked as though they'd just stepped off the set of a Hollywood movie about gypsies, wearing handmade clothes—the women in ankle-length skirts and babushkas in the middle of the wilderness—and calling to each other through the woods in an indecipherable tongue. As soon as they saw me they turned tail, as if engaged in some sort of furtive, illegal activity. Many of the Eastern Europeans, for reasons that are obvious to even the most casual student of history, are reluctant to talk to strangers and view anyone outside their cohort as a potential authority figure best to be avoided.

Just the other day I was more lucky. I found a group of Ukrainians working a patch who were willing to talk. Already they had a couple five-gallon buckets filled with slippery jacks, red caps, and the odd king bolete. One of the two women spoke decent English and explained that they were from a village outside Kiev. She wouldn't submit to a photo but her picking partner agreed to hold up what they called a "brown cap." They differentiated between three different types of Leccinum: red caps, brown caps, and black caps. This is a notoriously difficult genus to key out at the species level, and there is some debate even about the edibility of these mushrooms in general since they are known to cause illness on occasion, with one poisoning case in particular that has made the rounds recently.

The other prevalent genus, Suillus, which includes slippery jacks and jills, is ubiquitous on the forest floor but as the common name suggests, often slimy. The Ukrainians said they peeled the cap and then boiled the mushrooms in salted water before pickling or canning. A dash of lemon juice, they said, made all the difference. These are seriously labor-intensive mushrooms and I've never done much with them. Some people will dry and powder various kinds of Suillus for use in soups and stews.

Also that day I met a man from Moscow named Eugene. He was picking with his wife and had a basket filled with similar species (shown at the top of this post). Eugene said he sliced and salted the mushrooms before preserving them. We exchanged email addresses, a level of communication that initially surprised me, but when I tried to send photos to Eugene the next day my message bounced.

I don't mean to sound like a cultural tourist, but I think it's cool that an activity like mushroom hunting can introduce you to a diverse group of people from around the world. I'm hoping that I can get to know a few of these folks and learn their methods of mushroom preparation. But asking questions in the bush doesn't always get you far. You can understand why people hailing from the former Soviet bloc might be suspicious. The Ukrainians were surprised that I was alone.

"Not good to be alone in woods," one of them said to me. As if putting an exclamation point on the statement, a quick volley of gunfire echoed through the hills. Just target practice, I said. They looked at me with raised eyebrows. "Yes, maybe."

Porcini 101: Porcini Risotto

It's fall porcini time in the Pacific Northwest. This is perhaps my favorite of all the wild mushrooms. The season is late this year because of a lack of moisture in August. I found just two porcini while backpacking in the North Cascades over Labor Day, but they were prime specimens, perfect for risotto.

After scouring the Web for risotto recipes the other day I got the impression that home cooks might appreciate a bit more explanation of what porcini is (or are, since the word is plural for porcino) and how to buy, prepare, and cook them. While I'm no expert, this is what I've learned after several years of foraging, eating, and putting up porcini.

Taxonomy

A nice button

Porcini is Italian for a number of related edible mushrooms in the Boletus genus. The French call them ceps, the Germans steinpilz, and the Brits sometimes refer to them slangily as pennybuns. The term porcini seems to be the most widely used in culinary circles. Mycologists refer to all the species in the genus collectively as boletes. Boletes are distinguished by having pores under the caps rather than gills. Though they come in many shapes, colors, and sizes, most boletes are characterized by dome-shaped caps and thick, fleshy stems.

A mature porcino flanked by a sliced button

The most famous bolete (also considered the most choice for the table around the world) is known as the king bolete, its taxonomic name Boletus edulis, which roughly translates as "superior edible mushroom." While porcini can include a number of edible boletes, the king bolete is the one most cooks prize. It's characterized by an often large cap with a tan to brick red coloration, pores that are white or gray in young individuals and becoming yellowish to greenish-yellow in mature specimens, and a bulbous white stem with fine reticulation (netting) and sometimes a pinkish blush. Sliced open, the king's flesh is white.

Often when people say "porcini" they are referring specifically to the king bolete, Boletus edulis. The terminology becomes a little more complicated on the West Coast of North America, where we have another species commonly known as the "spring king" or spring porcini, Boletus rex-veris. You can read more about spring porcini here.

Notice the difference in color between the porcini at the top of the post and those directly above. The former are coastal king boletes from Washington picked the other day; the latter are kings from the Rocky Mountains of Colorado. At some point we might see further splitting of the Boletus edulis complex of species.

Dried vs. Fresh

In Italy during summer and fall you are likely to see market stalls overflowing with boxes of fresh porcini picked from the local woods (or, more likely, imported from Poland and elsewhere in Eastern Europe to fill the Italian demand). Increasingly in the U.S. you might find porcini at specialty shops and farmers markets in season. In Seattle much of our local porcini is supplied by Foraged and Found Edibles. However, in general it's more common to see small packages of imported dried porcini at the market.

Porcini for sale at a Genoa market. Photo by Audrey Scott

Porcini have been known for centuries as mushrooms that respond well to drying. The drying process enables these mushroom with a short season and brief shelf life to be used any time of year, whether in season or not. Equally important, the drying process also concentrates the flavor of the mushrooms, giving them a powerful, earthy bass note that does wonders for soups, stews, sauces, and stocks. Dried porcini are primarily used as a flavoring. You extract the flavor by reconstituting the dried mushrooms in warm water for at least 20 minutes and then using the resulting mushroom stock in your cooking. The reconstituted mushrooms themselves can also be used but their texture is not as good as fresh porcini.

Fresh porcini have a mild, nutty taste and a dense, meaty texture. It's no surprise that Italians also call them "poor man's steak." You can slice and grill porcini like a cut of meat. They can be quickly sauteed over high heat but also stand up well to pro-longed cooking. Look for young, firm specimens with caps that have not fully opened—that is, they're still concave like umbrellas—and whitish pores if possible. The caps of older specimens will be plane or even convex, with yellow pores; these will be softer fleshed and cook up somewhat slimy but they still have good flavor if not the desired texture. Some sellers will slice their porcini in half to show they are not worm-infested. Small buttons are useful for presentation; sliced thinly, they retain their classic mushroom silhouette and look great on the plate.

For texture, I prefer fresh porcini. For taste, it depends on what I'm cooking. Using a combination of fresh and dried is often a way to get the best of both worlds. Usually when I use dried porcini I pulverize the mushrooms in a blender first. This porcini "dust" can be easily added to dishes to boost the flavor.

Risotto

While looking over a variety of fresh porcini risotto recipes online, I was surprised to see how many recipes ask you to cook the mushrooms first and then remove them from the pan before adding the risotto rice, as if they're so fragile that they can only be added back into the dish later as a sort of frilly garnish on top. Nonsense. The whole point is to allow the rice to take on the mushroom flavor as it cooks. Besides, even after a half-hour of cooking, fresh porcini mushrooms of good quality will retain their meaty texture. Why complicate the process?

Many recipes simply use the dried porcini. This is fine out of season, though I would consider adding fresh mushrooms of some sort, even a bland supermarket variety like cremini, if only for texture. The best porcini risotto is the one that uses both fresh and dried porcini. Here's my recipe:

8 cups chicken or vegetable stock

1/2 cup (approx 2 oz) dried porcini

1-2 tbsp olive oil

1 medium yellow onion, diced

2-3 cloves garlic, diced

1/2 lb fresh porcini, roughly chopped into 1-inch cubes

1/2 cup white wine

1 1/2 cups arborio rice

2 tbsp butter

4 heaping tbsp mascarpone

1/2 cup parmesan cheese, grated

1/2 cup (or more) sweet peas (frozen is fine)

salt and pepper, to taste

1. Warm stock just below simmer in a pot on stovetop.

2. Pulverize dried porcini in blender or food processor and add to stock.

3. In a large pan suitable for risotto, saute onions, garlic, and fresh porcini in olive oil for several minutes over medium-high heat until mushrooms begin to brown ever so slightly, stirring regularly. I like to season the mixture with a few grindings of salt and pepper at this point.

4. De-glaze with white wine. When liquid has nearly bubbled off, add rice and stir well, coating thoroughly. Allow rice to cook until slightly toasted, 2-3 minutes.

5. Add 4-5 ladlefuls of stock to pan, stirring. It helps to have a risotto spoon. Reduce heat to medium-low. Continue to add a ladle or two of warm stock as the liquid is absorbed, stirring regularly, about 15-20 minutes.

6. Risotto is nearly done when creamy yet al dente and just slightly crunchy inside. Now stir in the butter, mascarpone, and half the parmesan along with a couple more ladles of stock, then mix in the peas, and cover for a few minutes.

Don't be alarmed if you have leftover stock; it's always better with risotto to have more than enough. The finished risotto should be rich and creamy. The peas add a dash of color and nice pops of texture as a counterpoint to the porcini and rice. Add salt if necessary. For a soupier risotto, add more stock. Serve with remaining parmesan as a garnish. Serves 4.

Note: For an attractive and tasty garnish, thinly slice a couple small porcini buttons and saute in butter until lightly browned, as shown in the images above and below.

Rocky Mountain Kings

The biggest fruitings of king boletes I've ever seen haven't been in the Pacific Northwest. No, the Rockies own that distinction, in particular the high montane reaches of northern Colorado. We visit this region every year to see family. I can think of three separate occasions when I've hit the porcini jackpot dead-on. The first was a solo backpacking-fishing trip on the Colorado-Wyoming border that gave me my first inkling of what the Rockies could do from a mycophagist standpoint; the second an all-day singletrack mountain bike through high meadows not far from a gap in the Gore Range where the Colorado River punches out of Middle Park; and the third this week southeast of Steamboat Springs.

I don't visit the Rockies enough to have firm beliefs about the mushroom hunting possibilities here, but this is what I've gathered so far. August is generally the month to check your porcini spots. If it's not a drought year and normal patterns of afternoon showers prevail, start looking a few days after the rains start. Go high. Get above the lodgepole pine forests into more mixed coniferous forests, especially spruce. Here's a shot of a "king with a view" just below an 11,000-foot pass in the Zirkel Wilderness. 

A mushroom hunter from Seattle would be forgiven if he was confused by the taxonomy of these kings. Though clearly an edible form of bolete with its white pores (in young specimens) and faint pink netting on the stipe (reticulation, in the parlance), these kings routinely exhibit much darker caps, sometimes a deep wine-red, that contrast sharply with the tan, sometimes pale caps of Cascade kings. Still, they are currently classified as the same species as the world-renowned kings of Italy, the Pacific Northwest, and elsewhere: Boletus edulis. 

The taste, though mushroomy and choice, might not be quite as nutty as Cascade fall porcini. Which brings me to my main question: Why the lack of a commercial culture surrounding this mushroom in the Rockies? Is the territory too remote? A lack of demand? Is this subspecies of king considered inferior to other varieties and therefore not sought after? I've never seen another pot hunter around here, never a buy station, never encountered that bane of the Northwest mushroomer: the cut stem. Maybe we're far enough from Denver here to escape the competition.

To the south of me, in the pine forests of the Southwest, there's another king bolete (currently classified as its own species) that some say is the best tasting of all the world's porcini: the white king bolete, Boletus barrowsii. Supposedly it fruits earlier than other kings. One of these years I'll make a roadtrip in July to suss out this hallowed variety of porcini. In the meantime, I'm loving my quietly regal Rocky Mountain kings.

Sea-Flavor Noodles with Porcini

Regular readers know I have a thing for Fuchsia Dunlop (even if I have to look up Fuchsia each time I need to spell it). More to the point: I like Sichuan, and Dunlop's cookbook Land of Plenty is a prized resource on this front.

Not too long ago I would have scoffed at the idea of cooking Sichuan at home, but over time I've collected a small arsenal of Chinese pastes, oils, and other condiments, which is half the battle. Last month I made Fish-Fragrant Geoduck with Morels and in April Dry-fried Chicken with Fiddleheads.

This will probably be my last fling with spring porcini this year. Nearly constant mushroom hunting and cookery has put a strain on the household here at FOTL headquarters and it's time to start thinking about summer berries. Plus, I've been told to paint the house before our little piece of Appalachia sinks any deeper into the mire.

Sea-Flavor Noodles with Porcini is an adaptation of Dunlop's own adaptation of Mr. Xie's Sea-Flavor Noodles, taken from a noodle house near Sichuan University in Chengdu. I substituted shrimp paste (which I had on hand) for dried shrimp (which I didn't) and added fresh shrimp as well. For the mushrooms I used dried porcini in place of dried Chinese fungi as well as fresh porcini in place of button mushrooms. Dried matsutake would be another good choice, or dried shiitake.

I find it interesting that spring porcini has not found it's way into the cuisine of West Coast Asian restaurants. Maybe it's too expensive. Or maybe it just isn't considered authentic enough (there's that ridiculous word again). But the fact is, spring porcini lends itself quite well to Asian-style foods. It has a firm texture that one could almost call crunchy, and its mild flavor goes with almost anything—in fact, spring porcini has a tendency to take on the flavors of whatever it's cooked with, making it a great mushroom for tossing in the wok with a bunch of aromatic ingredients.

The other night I had dinner at Mashiko, the only sustainable sushi parlor in Seattle, with my friend Casson Trenor, author of Sustainable Sushi: A Guide to Saving the Oceans One Bite at a Time. Mashiko is amazing on so many levels I just don't know where to start, but suffice to say one can eat VERY well without raping the sea. Chef Hajime (@sushiwhore on Twitter) is an artist who cares about the resource. We brought him some porcini from a foraging trip the previous day and Hajime used the mushrooms along with scallops, clams, and oysters to make an intensely rich hot dish served in an enormous oyster shell. He pronounced the porcini "Good." Yes indeedy!

Here's the Sea-Flavor Noodles with Porcini recipe:

1 oz dried porcini
3 tbsp peanut oil
1/2 lb pork loin, thinly sliced
1/2 lb porcini, chopped
2 tbsp Chinese cooking wine (Shaoxing)
6 oz bamboo shoots
1 tsp shrimp paste
1 tbsp chili paste
1 quart chicken stock
1/2 lb shrimp
12 oz fresh Chinese noodles
3 scallions, minus white bulbs, chopped

1. Reconstitute dried mushrooms in a bowl with a cup of warm water. Set aside for 30 minutes. When mushrooms have reconstituted, wring out excess water back into bowl, reserving mushroom water for later.

2. Heat oil in wok or deep saute pan over high flame. Add sliced pork loin and cook for a few minutes until meat loses its color. Add fresh and reconstituted porcini and stir-fry another couple minutes. Splash with Shaoxing wine, stirring, and add bamboo shoots. Stir-fry another minute.

3. Add shrimp paste and chili paste, stirring well, then stock and reserved mushroom water. Bring to boil, then reduce heat and simmer for an hour until pork is tender.

4. When meat is ready, season soup with salt and pepper to taste. Add shrimp and allow to cook for a couple minutes before serving. Boil noodles in separate pot or simply add to bowls and ladle over hot soup. Garnish with scallions.

Tagliolini with Porcini Sauce

We celebrated a friend's birthday the other night at one of my favorite recent additions to the Seattle restaurant scene, a cozy little trattoria called Cascina Spinasse. Four hours later, after multiple courses and wines—and a midnight votive incident that luckily didn't torch the place—we stumbled home. But the next day I just had to call the restaurant to ask them about their porcini pasta. Amazingly, the chef answered the phone and gave me step-by-step instructions.

In the tradition of typical Piedmontese food, the dish is simple yet flavorful, more than the sum of its parts. We made it at home that night and I'm happy to say the re-creation did the original proud. You don't need gobs of porcini to make this pasta—a half-pound is more than enough for two, and you can get by with a quarter-pound.

Martha liked it because no cream was involved. Fresh pasta is essential. Every time I make my own pasta I vow to never go back to the industrial-made stuff. We decided on tagliolini because that felt like the right size to go with the finely chopped porcini. Two other important points: First, caramelize the porcini until lightly browned but don't overcook the mushrooms into hard little nuggets; and second, use the best chicken stock you can get (or make).

10 oz fresh pasta
1/2 lb fresh porcini (or less), cut into 1/4-inch cubes
1 small yellow onion, chopped
2-3 cloves garlic, chopped
2 tbsp olive oil, divided
1/2 cup white wine
1 cup or more chicken stock (or vegetable)
2 tbsp butter
small handful parsley, chopped
salt and pepper

1. Saute cubed porcini over medium heat in 1 tablespoon of olive oil until caramelized. Remove from pan.

2. Saute onion and garlic in 1 tablespoon of olive oil until soft. Return porcini to pan and stir together. Deglaze with white wine, cooking until nearly evaporated.

3. Add chicken stock, a few splashes at a time, allowing sauce to cook down before adding more liquid. Adjust for seasoning.

4. Just before pasta is ready, add 2 tablespoons of butter to sauce. Toss pasta with sauce and parsley.

It's that easy. Spring porcini are mild flavored, much more so than their fall brethren. Caramelizing helps to concentrate the flavor and the wine-chicken stock reduction is savory without overwhelming the delicate flavor of the mushrooms. This will be a dish we go back to each year when the spring porcini are popping in the mountains.

Little Pigs of Spring

As feared, the sudden warming trend in my region caused a massive blowout of spring porcini ("little pigs" in Italian) at the lower elevations. I know you PacNor'westers have been craving sun and wondering if summer would ever show its face, but the same weather patterns that conspired to make this an epic morel year have put the kibbosh on our spring kings. Some of my patches haven't produced at all this year while others are putting out a fraction of their usual production—and now one of my best patches is a worm-riddled mess.

Such conditions test the mushroom hunter. My advice: Know your habitat. Identify microclimates that will fare better in off years. As always, try to catch the vanguard of the first flush at a given elevation. I picked this one patch for the last three weeks. Week One, when I would have expected a good fruiting, only a few scattered buttons showed, amounting to maybe five pounds. Week Two, which I'll write about more in depth in a moment, saw more of the same, with the buttons still trying to pop, a ten-pound day. Now I'm remembering those first two weeks fondly. Yesterday, Week Three, was my third trip to the same patch. The last few days we've become reacquainted with that shy fireball in the sky and I had an inkling of what I might find. Sure enough, porcini littered the woods, poundage of it, old flags and young buttons alike wormed out beyond repair. It was a sad affair. I picked about 30 pounds, maybe a tenth of what I saw, and of that three-quarters went either straight into the dryer or into the garbage.

Mushroom hunters live by the weather and suffer by it.

David Aurora says the spring kings (Boletus rex-veris) fruit in most of the mountain ranges west of the Rockies, including the northern Sierra, Cascades, and Blues. As far as I know there are no records of spring porcini in the coastal mountains. They seem to require drier conditions. In the Cascades we only find them on the eastern slopes, usually when the trilliums have turned from white to purple and the morels are tailing off.

With all varieties of porcini, I look for the heavier timber, particularly true firs and spruce. The sort of cutover and abused landscapes in which morels flourish don't seem as fruitful for the boletes, and this is one of the reasons I enjoy hunting porcini even more than morels. A day of not finding porcini is still a beautiful hike on the sunny side of the mountains. I've seen lots of wildlife while looking for spring kings, from big bucks to angry goshawks. The other day at dusk I watched a fox saunter across a logging road and into the woods as if taking an evening stroll. He could have worn a sweater vest and I wouldn't have been surprised in the least.

This year I had the pleasure of introducing my Sacramento friends Hank Shaw and Holly Heyser to porcini hunting. You might know them for their excellent, award-winning blogs, Hunter Angler Gardener Cook and NorCal Cazadora. Hank and Holly spend a lot of time in the bush with a shotgun or rifle at the ready, so mushroom hunting was an instant hit. So much is the same: the need to understand habitat and ecosystems; a willingness to slow down and allow the natural world to inform you; the thrill of the chase; and the addiction that springs from that first brush with success.

We visited a few of my regular spots and it was clear that the season was way behind schedule. Areas that would normally sport lots of flags by now—blown-out and maggot-ridden porcini that tell you you're in the right place—were just beginning to produce little buttons hiding under the duff. These buttons, sometimes called "mushrumps" by pot hunters, are known as #1's to commercial foragers because they're graded the highest on the desirability scale and earn the most money. They're firm, with caps that haven't fully opened up and white or grey pores. These are the ones to slice thinly and eat fresh with a salad. Unlike most wild mushrooms, young porcini can be eaten uncooked in small amounts. The flavor is quite a bit different this way, and surprisingly un-fungal.

That night in camp we ended up garnishing a salad of wild violets with fresh porcini and a simple dressing of olive oil and chinese rice wine. We cooked up Italian sausages in water infused with fir tips along with a saute of onions, green peppers, morels, and porcini. The finished dish was simple the way camping fare ought to be, yet bursting with the sort of local and seasonal ingredients you find in fine restaurants. Luckily for Hank and me, for dessert I only brought a small bottle of whiskey, so the next morning we were up and at 'em again.



When I got home with my catch I decided to imitate a dish I'd had at the Herbfarm the night before our porcini outing. This was my first visit to one of the Northwest's most celebrated restaurants and all I can say is the nine-course meal with accompanying wine flights was truly awesome. Our host Ron Zimmerman is no namby-pamby on the pour either. (Next time we'll book a room at the Inn.) Marty called it the single best meal of her life. I decided it was in my top two of all time, neck-and-neck with last holiday's pilgrimage to Eleven Madison in New York. But the Herbfarm surpassed that renowned eatery at the local angle, with scrupulous attention paid to seasonal ingredients from nearby places.

For my home-cooked version of an Herbfarm dish, I roasted porcini two ways. I chopped up the stems and caps of a few larger, soft-fleshed specimens to make a sauce, and also thinly sliced a couple buttons for the garnish. The sauce I ladled on the plate and topped with a fillet of wild Alaskan chinook and sauteed fava beans; the roasted porcini buttons decorated the dish.

Roasted Porcini Sauce



This is a good use for those larger, floppier kings that have gone soft in the flesh. Usually such specimens are bug-infested, and even decent ones are only suitable as dryers, but occasionally you find mature boletes with yellow pores that have somehow avoided the flies. These are perfect for making sauce.

1 lb porcini, cleaned and cut into small cubes
1 handful dried porcini
olive oil
several sprigs fresh thyme, chopped
several springs fresh oregano, chopped
1 shallot, chopped
2 cloves garlic, chopped
1/2 cup white wine
chicken stock (optional)
salt and pepper

1. Reconstitute dried porcini in 1 cup warm water. Set aside for 30 minutes. When ready, wring out excess water back into container and reserve mushroom stock for later.

2. Saute shallot and garlic in a couple tablespoons of olive oil until soft. Stir in both fresh and reconstituted porcini. Cook, stirring, several minutes until lightly browned, using more olive oil if necessary. Add fresh herbs, a few grindings of pepper, and a generous amount of salt and cook another minute.

3. Deglaze with wine. I used a Riesling to get a sweeter edge. When wine is mostly cooked off, slowly add mushroom stock.

4. Blend mixture with an immersion blender (or use a food processor). Finish with chicken stock (optional) to desired consistency.

Wild Salmon with Favas and Roasted Porcini Sauce

For the final plate you'll want to broil a good cut of wild salmon (10 minutes per inch of thickness), roast a button or two of prime, thinly-sliced porcini, and saute the favas. I roasted my porcini in a cast iron skillet with olive oil, a couple smashed cloves of garlic, and a few rough-cut springs of thyme, plus seasoning. When I'd gotten a nice browning on both sides I tossed in a pat of butter and let it foam in the pan, then removed the porcini to a bowl. I quickly sauteed the favas in the same pan as the salmon finished, then arranged all the elements on the plate. Seasonal goodness.



I've written numerous posts about spring porcini. Click these links for:

• more info, including a video of spring porcini hunting
  
• Grilled Porcini Salad
  
• Pickled Porcini
  
• drying porcini
  
• freezing spring porcini
  
• Alaskan Cod with Porcini & Chard Saute
  
• Fettucini with Porcini, Pancetta & Tomato Cream Sauce
  
• The Poor Man's Steak, my Oct. '08 article in Seattle Metro
  
• Hank Shaw's Porcini-O-Rama of delicious recipes