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I was wandering around the Davis Farmer’s Market Saturday and spotted something rare: spring porcini mushrooms. Then I noticed the exorbitant price — $30 a pound — snorted, and walked on.
But as I walked, a thought wormed its way into my brain. “You know you’d need to drive to Shasta or Mendocino to even get into the habitat for spring porcini. That’s a lotta gas, plus meals — and you’ve never looked for them before, so you wouldn’t even be guaranteed to find them.” Still, $30 a pound is pretty damn spendy.
I bought some fish and saw John Bledsoe, my friendly neighborhood hog farmer, but John had forgotten to bring me the fatback and pork belly I’d ordered to make salami and bacon. Depressed, I continued to wander aimlessly. Until I passed the porcini again.
Fuck it, I thought. Other people spend their limited disposable income to buy drugs or booze or go to strip clubs or get pedicures or see a shrink. I’ll just be that freak who spent $30 on one raw ingredient for a meal for two. And these porcini did look really nice. So I picked out some big ‘uns, which turned out to be slightly less than a pound. “Only” $28! Uh…score.
I now had the same feeling I had when I came home with exactly four snipe to feed Holly and me last winter: stretch the ingredient and try to get it to say different things at one meal. Here’s what I came up with.
To start, I made a raw porcini salad. Mario Batali apparently makes one that I’ve never tried, but if I did I would hope it would go like this: Shaved, homemade lamb bresaola, porcini “marinated” in lemon juice for just a few minutes, then coated with an herby dressing made with basil, fresh oregano and fresh thyme, with a little grated dry cheese tossed in for body.
Damn good. As porcini have more protein than nearly any other non-animal edible, I’d say I “honored the protein,” as Top Chef judge Tom Colicchio so memorably uttered on one of last season’s episodes. Actually I find that phrase so wildly amusing — it is such chefspeak — that I just like repeating it whenever I get the chance.
Last year I learned a neat trick with enoki mushrooms in Japanese Cooking: A Simple Art
Behold! Hank’s lacquered porcini mushrooms! These were a goddamn work of art. I could eat a full pound’s worth, just like this. They look simple, but aren’t: You cook them in a searing hot dry pan, then remove them, then remove the pan from the heat to cool a bit, then add lots of butter, which, when it hits the pan immediately becomes brown butter. Return the mushrooms, add thyme until it gets lovely brown. Remove them again and add a healthy splash of 1974 Heitz cellars Angelica — a crazy good sweet dessert wine — cook this halfway down, return the mushrooms to coat, and serve.
Phew. I’ll write the exact recipe down in a bit. But these mushrooms were exactly the way a mushroom ought to be: Meaty, rich, a little salty and slightly sweet.
On to the main course. What I had left were the chunks and stemmy bits, which I decided to make into a porcini ragout. In late May? Yep, we’re getting oddly cool weather here, with highs only in the low 80s, so I reckoned I could get away with it. I also dropped in some dried porcini for a double dose. Oh yeah, and some handmade pancetta. And a pig’s foot.
Instead of pasta, I made grilled polenta to serve with it. Why? I wanted to use my brand-new gas grill, and it just seemed right. This was Holly’s favorite dish of the night. All that porky goodness — especially from the trotter, whose collagen made the whole sauce silky — with a double hit of porcini, lots of red wine and the crispy, soft-on-the-inside polenta. Yeah, I’ll be making this dish again.
So was it worth all that money? I think so.
It would have been more fulfilling to have ventured to the misty north and found these mushrooms myself. But as I am just a barely passable mushroom hunter, I would have been wandering blind. Not that this is such a bad thing. Any pursuit worth doing requires that you put in the time to learn before you get good at it. What I need, however, is a guide and mushroom mentor to learn the region’s shroomery — so that the time I’m putting in is at least productive. Still looking for that person.
What dinners like our porcini fest do is help keep that desire to learn stoked and hot. Foraging and hunting and fishing are, to me, less about survival and more about enjoying the many delights Nature has set out for us. Knowing that there is something as delicious as a spring porcini out there gives purpose to my thus-far-fruitless forays into the mushroom woods.
And if it costs me $28 to keep me on track, so be it.
Oh my God how beautiful is all of this? $30 a pound indeed, and totally worth it it looks like. I love your writing, can taste every one of these dishes…
LOVING this homage to the mushroom. The lacquered porcini look so good!
Love how you just dropped in a pigs foot.. as you do.
Wild mushroom ragout with grilled polenta is one of my favorite things. I do mine with chanterelles in the fall.
Porcini are a good five hour drive for me (I haven’t found better than the Rogue Nat’l Forest), so I hear you on splurging on spendy farmer’s market ‘shrooms.
You know, I’ve never been all that crazy about mushrooms. But I believe I could join right in with you in devouring a pound of those laquered porcinis. Well done, sir!
We’re not having much luck with morels this spring (well, some, but not lots) but I did find a couple of big clusters of oyster mushrooms this weekend. I’m cooking them down right now, and planning to pressure can them this year (instead of freezing). They were big, so they can take a fair amount of stewing … and here’s hoping this cool rain we’re getting right now will bring up another batch of morels.
Heading up for some porcini hunting this weekend. We spent the two weekend prior to Memorial Day in the Sierra hunting morels with fantastic success (around 25lbs), and found one porcini. Rumor has it the porcinis are popping and they are coming through in good numbers.
If you think about it, I’ll bet your whole meal came down to $40-$50, or $25 a plate (not counting work time). And you didn’t have to leave a 20% tip! While not a deal, it is the same you would have paid for a nice meal out, and you got to cook it yourself and write about it. You win.
While the porcinis look wonderful, the lamb bresacola makes my mouth water! You’ve gotta go into charcuterie business and sell it Hank!
And how much is fois gras going for?
NTSC: Foie was recently “on special” for $33 a lobe…
Lynn: No charcuterie biz for me. You need a USDA kitchen to do it in if you want to sell, then I’d need a walk-in with temp/humidity control to cure.
Josh: True dat. heard you just ate shad milt. Brave man…
JR: You going to Shasta? And if you find that you just can’t eat all those morels, I might be willing to take some off your hands… 8-D
Charlotte: Still looking for downed willows, which are our major place to find oyster mushrooms…
Heather: Maybe we should all converge on the Rogue this fall for a mushroom/blogger confab?
Matt: EVERYTHING’s better with a pig’s foot tossed in. Except maybe ice cream. Or strawberries…
Ok, Hank… you’ve alluded to it a couple of times… talk about the gas grill. Inquiring minds want to know! Loved the post, by the way.
Well, I just spent $28 on one ingredient too. Granted, it was Copper River sockeye that fed four of us plus the kids, but I catch yer drift. Spending that much on mushrooms just seems wrong. On the other hand, you couldn’t get spring porcini most places until recently, thanks to our industrious foragers, and now that it’s a hot ticket it’s expensive. Price should come down as the season goes on. Up here we’re just starting to get the porcini flush. Might try to sneak out tomorrow. More likely next week. Will definitely try your soy technique. Everything looks delicious.
You hit the nail on the head- mushrooms are the best- I eat them every day of my life- usually in an omelet. Cannot always afford the ones I want to buy even though they are now available here. I well remember hunting morels, in May, in Michigan and having my mother fry up a huge panful for lunch. (And she made jellied pig’s feet too.)
Thanks, Scampwalker. I decided to take the plunge and buy a gas grill because I wanted to do more informal grilling on worknights — without starting a fire that will burn far longer than I need it to for something simple like duck breasts or fish steaks.
Most of what I do is barbecue, not grilling, so I am still working out the differences on this new grill. So far it’s been OK. Once I get the hang of it right, I will let you know.
Hank,
Yep, I ate ‘soft roe.’ And, I went running down the hall & giggling like a school girl, telling my wife with pride that Hank Shaw called me a brave eater.
Sounds like it was worth every penny of the $28.
Cheaper just to eat your porcini at Oliveto!
We’re looking at Shasta around July, the Sierra’s in the next couple of weeks. We’re still very new to the ‘shroom foraging here in CA so we’ll see how it goes. I’m headed out on my first pig hunt this weekend, pretty excited, but it does take away from a weekend of ‘shroom hunting. The dilemna’s I have!
Hank,
I don’t know if you look at comments on old posts, but if you do, can you link me to the Hank’s Lacquered Porcini recipe (assuming that you ever got around to writing it down “formally”.
Thanks!
-Lou