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October 05, 2005

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Porcini Roasted in Miso Garlic Butter

Each year, I celebrate finding the first porcini of the season by cooking a special dish (and also quite a bit of squealing, running around in circles, dancing, and clapping). In the past, I've made porcini risotto. This year, it was porcini pizza. Next year, I'm certain I will be cooking this recipe, as it perfectly captures the aroma of Boletus edulis just plucked from the cool forest floor (and I'm not saying that in hyperbolic sell-the-post food writer- ese , it's the darned truth). You'd think that would be a fairly easy thing to do, to perfectly highlight the taste of porcini. Not so. They can easily be over-fussed, and their flavor almost totally lost in a recipe. As far as I'm concerned, fresh porcini are so special that their flavor shouldn't be masked, and they should never appear generically as "any old mushroom" in a dish. Forget drowning them in heavy tomato sauces or obscuring them with strong cheeses. A recipe should erect a bright

DUTCH RONDOS - TENDER LITTLE CAKES WITH ALMOND FILLING

Hanaâ, our "head baker", chose rondos, buttery pastry filled with almond paste - very appealing to a marzipan fan like me! The little cakes, very popular in the Netherlands, are supposed to have a texture like Dutch apple pie - I never had one, so I can't comment on that, but they are certainly delightful. Dutch bakers have special pastry rings to make rondos (or kanos, if they are ovals). Lacking these, I used my (slightly larger) English muffin rings (the other option would have been baking them in a muffin tin). There are two choices for the marzipan filling, either the traditional almond paste that needs to be prepared a day ahead, or a same-day frangipane, equally nice - but with more butter. A tender-crumbly little cake with marzipan filling Not to stray from my good intentions for the New Year , I piously opted for the slightly slimmer almond paste (the rondos didn't need more calories, anyway), reduced a sugar a bit (this could have been

Porcini Ketchup

As previously noted, there is a bit of porcini madness happening in my kitchen. For the first time ever, after wildcrafting them, I've got enough with which to experiment. This is what I do, with or without an audience. I spend my free time playing in the kitchen, pushing boundaries, seeing what is possible with the wild foods that grow all around me. It's my sport (along with thrifting). While reading the second volume of recipes out of Blackberry Farm , their recipe for mushroom ketchup caught my eye. They used button and shiitake mushrooms, but of course I had to try it with porcini. My early versions didn't go well. Our methods for making ketchup didn't jive, and I didn't feel like the spice blend worked with my wild Rocky Mountain mushrooms. Nonetheless, that was the genesis of this recipe, my jumping off point. I welcome that sort of inspiration. In the end, I came up with a much different set of spices to better complement my dried porcini, and also

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