The word porcino comes from pork, maybe because this top quality mushroom is as tasty as meat
ingredients for 4 servings (cost about 4 € pp)
- 40 g dried porcini mushrooms
- 10 g dried porcini powder
- 240 g carnaroli rice
- A small glass white wine
- 1,2 litre vegetable stock
- EV sunflower oil
- 1 medium onion
- Salt
- 40 g butter
- 40 gr Parmigiano or Grana cheese
- Chopped parsley
In the extraordinary world of mushrooms, porcini have a special place. The majority of consumers considers them the most delicious product of the forest.
Porcini can be prepared with all cooking ways. Pasta, risotto, grilled, sautéed, as a part of braised meats, carpaccio and many many more. But risotto is without doubt one of the best selections we can do.
Apart from fresh porcinis we can also find frozen and dried ones. Frozen mushrooms are awful but the the dried ones are a descent selection for the months we cannot find fresh ones. There is also porcini powder a powerful weapon for every cook who wants to fortify his creations.
In today risotto I have used porcini powder for the risotto base as it offers very strong aromas to rice and also dried porcini pieces. If you cannot find porcini powder, just put some dried porcini for a while in the oven to completely loose their humidity and then grind them to powder in the coffee grinder.
Let´s start preparing today´s risotto:
First of all we put the dried porcini in lukewarm water to soak for at least half an hour.
We start preparing a soffritto. We cut in very small dice the onion and we gently fry it in EV sunflower oil for 5 minutes.
In a small pan we lightly toast the rice WITH NO FAT AT ALL and when it is so hot that we cannot touch it in our hands, we pour it into the sofrito pan. We add the wine, the powder and the mushroom pieces and we start cooking the risotto, adding a ladle of very hot – boiling stock, when the liquid starts to get reduced.
While the rice is being prepared, we finely grind the cheese and we chop some parsley.
When the rice is prepared (al dente of course) we remove the pan from the stove. We taste the salt and, if needed, we add some more.
Stirring constantly we start adding the parsley, the butter and the cheese. We continue stirring until we obtain a very creamy result, we cover the pan with a lid and we let it stand for 3 minutes.
We put on plates and we serve.
