Simple Italy

Celebrating Your Inner Italian

Tuscan Porcini Soup

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One taste of zuppa di porcini whisks me to rural Tuscany in autumn. My friend Anna Maria Gaggio showed me how to make this dish in the kitchen of her Tuscan farmhouse, using fresh porcini gathered by her husband Mario.

Because imported porcini are outrageously expensive, I recreate the soup using a mixture of fresh baby bella mushrooms and reconstituted dried porcini. The flavor is intense because the dried mushrooms concentrate the essence.

The portions in this recipe are adequate for a light meal with a salad. Half portions make a wonderful first course for a holiday meal. If you like, prepare the soup a few days ahead of time, refrigerate and reheat before serving.

Zuppa di Porcini

Serves 4 to 6

1          ounce dried porcini mushrooms

2                    cans fat-free reduced-sodium (14 1/2 ounces each) chicken broth, divided

1/3       cup olive oil

1 1/4    pounds baby bella mushrooms, sliced

4          cloves garlic, minced

1          tablespoon minced fresh rosemary leaves

1/4       teaspoon dried red-pepper flakes

3/4       teaspoon salt

1                    can (14 1/2 ounces) diced tomatoes, drained

4        cups water

4 to 6   slices (1-inch-thick) toasted rustic bread

2          ounces (1/2 cup) grated Parmesan cheese

Place the porcini and 1 cup of broth in a microwaveable glass measuring cup. Cover with plastic wrap, leaving a vent. Microwave for 3 minutes or until bubbling. Set aside for 10 minutes to soften.

Meanwhile, warm the oil in a large pot over high heat. Add the baby bella mushrooms, garlic, rosemary, red-pepper flakes, and salt. Cook, stirring, for about 5 minutes or until the mushrooms start to give off liquid. Turn off the heat.

Drain the porcini through a fine sieve lined with a coffee filter. Save the broth. Rinse the porcini and chop. Add the porcini, mushroom broth, chicken broth, water, and tomatoes to the pot. Cook over medium-low heat for 20 minutes for the flavors to blend.

Place a slice of toasted bread in the bottom of each soup bowl. Ladle the soup over the bread. Sprinkle with the Parmesan.

Note

Fresh rosemary is preferable to commercially dried leaves but if necessary, 2 teaspoons of dried rosemary may replace the fresh. Home-dried leaves, which crumble more readily than the commercially packaged rosemary, are also good to use. When you buy a bunch of fresh rosemary for a recipe, if you don’t use it all right away,  it makes sense to dry or freeze the remaining branches so they don’t go to waste.

Good Chicken Hunting

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The search for a sensational pollo alla cacciatora is over.

The search for a sensational pollo alla cacciatora is over.

The other day as I researched this recipe, I pondered on Facebook, “What makes a really good pollo alla cacciatora?

The suggestions were thoughtful.

“It should be cooked slowly so the flavors blend.”

“Eating it in Rome.”

“I put many different mushrooms in mine. To me that’s the best.”

My favorite came from Marge, who recommended “A really good-looking hunter in the kitchen.” Definitely the most enticing but, if acted upon, might have impeded my cooking progress.

Marge was right about one thing, though. “Alla cacciatora” translates as “like a hunter.” So I got to tracking a prototypical recipe in the classic 1,200 page Le Ricette Regionali Italiane and bagged three-from Emilia-Romagna, Umbria, and Sicilia (with the addendum con melanzane).

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Hunting for Porcini

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Dried porcini are easy to reconstitute and add intense mushroom flavor to many dishes.

Dried porcini are easy to reconstitute and add intense mushroom flavor to many dishes.

My youthful encounters with wild mushrooms did little to prepare me for Italian porcini. The fungus of my childhood is the puffball (Calvatia gigantea). Every year at summer’s end, dozens of these absurd orbs ballooned in the grass of our front yard in central Pennsylvania. My dad picked piles of puffballs and proudly lugged them into the kitchen, where my mom sliced and seasoned them, dipped them in flour, and hauled out a cast-iron skillet to fry them in homemade lard. Thank goodness for the pork fat. If those puffballs had any flavor, they were keeping it to themselves.

Years later, I tasted fresh porcini (pronounced pohr-CHEE-nee) and my appreciation of wild mushrooms was drastically, permanently upgraded. It was autumn at a country restaurant in Tuscany. The cook cleaned one just-picked fungo porcino, removed its stem, drizzled the saucer-sized taupe cap with fruity extra-virgin olive oil, seasoned it with salt and the wild herb nepitella, and grilled it over a wood fire. He served the mushroom alone on a plate, which made it seem really special.

I bit into the juicy flesh. It tasted like meat from the earth—complex, rich, and woodsy. The body was substantial yet tender. Truly this was a mushroom so exciting, it deserved to be called wild.

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