Feasting on porcini mushrooms

A week ago I checked the forests nearby and didn’t find a single penny bun bolet or porcini (Boletus edulis  in Latin, herkkutatti in Finnish, cèpe in French, Steinpilz in German) mushroom yet. Then one week later, these delicious gourmet mushrooms had popped up. They were everywhere.

 

On Friday evening I picked a basket-full from behind the house. On Saturday I went to a small forest one kilometer away, and couldn’t believe my eyes. Within an hour I had the basket and two plastic bags full, altogether 8 kgs of gourmet porcini mushrooms, which is an all-time record for me. There have been summers that I didn't find a single edible penny bun, as the worms like them, too. And our neighbors.

First night, we had porcinis 'al naturale'. We put them on a frying pan, first without butter, and after they had dried a bit, added butter only. At the table we sprinkled some Kosher salt  and black pepper on top of them. If you wish, you could also add some Thai soy sauce.

 

On Saturday, I tried a recipe ‘heavenly porcinis’ according to a Finnish recipe Taivaallinen tattipaistos found from Google.
 

Heavenly porcinis

• penny bun mushrooms
• butter + olive oil
• 1 – 2 onions
• a bunch of flat-leaved parsley and/or mint
• 1 garlic clove
• black pepper
• salt

Heat the skillet and add butter and olive oil. Fry chopped onions, and add little salt and some of the parsley and mint (I used both herbs at the same time). At mild heat let them simmer for about seven minutes. Meanwhile, cut the mushrooms into dice or larger pieces. Then add chopped garlic and black pepper, and turn on some more heat. The mushrooms will be added last with some more parsley. Continue frying for about five minutes so that the mushrooms get some color but remain juicy inside.

As we were only two eaters, we couldn’t eat them all fresh. On Saturday I also started drying the mushrooms which is the best way to store them. Our little Evermat dryer was working hard two whole days and nights. At 40 degrees C it took about 6 hours to dry one lot.

I also found two interesting mushrooms in our yard, parasol mushrooms. I have never tasted them although they are graded 3-star and regarded as gourmet food in Italy. I planned to try them on Sunday, but luckily didn’t... JD got some kind of norovirus, and if he had eaten a parasol mushroom earlier, he certainly would have blamed me for trying to poison him with strange mushrooms. I have to try these next year, if I'm lucky to find them. They are very rare.