A simple ragu of wild mushrooms was one of the recipes on the saute station back in the day when I was working at the now-closed Trattoria Da Vinci under Chef Angelo Volpicelli. Angelo was super talented, barely spoke English, and had owned his own restaurant in Rome for 12 years. Twelve years is a…
Dried Mushroom Recipes
Baked Fish with Black Trumpet Crust
When Sitka Salmon sent me loads of fish to cook with this year in preparation for a project we were working on, I started working on a few great ways to use frozen fish, especially white-fleshed fish like black rockfish and cod. Making a topping with dried black trumpets, leeks and tomatoes was one of…
The Black Staining Polypore
A number of years ago I got an envelope in the mail, ground dried powder of Meripilus sumstinei, the black staining polypore or rooster of the woods. it the first time someone sent me mushrooms in the mail I’d never met, which, is now a pretty regular occurrence (currently I’m waiting on honey truffles to…
Dried Black Trumpet-Ramp Butter
I’ve never met a wild mushroom butter I didn’t like, and the few variations on the simple theme (especially the fresh porcini butter) are some of the most trusty and popular recipes on this website. For the most part, you can substitute different mushrooms in the basic recipe, but this one I developed especially to…
Morels Stuffed with Morel Sauce
Morels stuffed with morel sauce is exactly what it sounds like: pretty much the ultimate stuffed morel, at least to me. One year during the spring hunting season, I ended up feeling gluttonous (and victorious) as I picked morel after morel, and after bringing them home and drying, I found I’d forgotten about the rest…
Toasted Porcini Aioli
During the Winter after a really good year for boletes (likely the legendary Pallidoroseus haul of 2013) I started making all kinds of things with my dried shrooms. Cooking with European porcini is easy: just throw them in anything and the flavor will take over. The porcini I pick in Minnesota (Boletus atkinsonii, or whatever…
Slow Roasted, Bolete-Crusted Lamb Rack
This slow-cooked, fall-off-the-bone-soft, bolete mushroom-crusted rack of lamb will rock your world. Rack of lamb is an intimidating thing for most home cooks as they’re expensive, and it doesn’t help that they’re small, touchy, and can overcook in just a few minutes either. And, depending on how your rack is trimmed, and how the animals…
Candy Cap Bread Pudding
Back when I was running the Salt Cellar, I was dead-set on getting some kind of candy cap dessert on the menu. First I had ice cream, but that wasn’t really interesting enough, and, since I was running a steakhouse concept, I wanted something with a good dose of Americana in it. I thought a…
Double Mushroom Ravioli
A few years ago I got a request from a reader to make “double mushroom ravioli” or ravioli with dried mushrooms in the dough and filling. I spent a few days tweaking a couple batches, but, as luck will have it, I accidentally selected something wrong and named the images incorrectly, which meant they ended…
Turkey Wild Rice Soup with Black Trumpets
As far as food is concerned, the main course for holidays will change here and there. One year it’s a ham for Christmas, the next year we’ll smoke a prime rib. One thing that’s constant is somewhere along the line there’s probably turkey at one of the gatherings I’ll attend, either for my girlfriend’s family…
Steak Aux Poivre with Dried Bolete Sauce
I learned to make steak aux poivre from watching my old chef from Rome, Angelo. Most of the time, he kept things pretty American-friendly, but the hanger steak aux poivre was done the old way: dredging the whole damn thing in freshly ground, coarse black pepper, then searing in a red hot pan. Oh, and…
Dried Wild Mushroom Stroganoff
Nothing said comfort food to me like a steaming hot bowl of mom’s stroganoff growing up. I don’t know what she put in hers, but more than likely it was a couple cans of cream of mushroom soup and some beef chuck. It wasn’t something we’d have every week, but it was definitely in the…
Beef Neck Terrine
I’ve created more versions of pates and terrines than I can count, and some of them blur together, but one sticks out above the rest: the beef neck terrine. It was a crowd favorite, but also burned in my mind as one server repeatedly asked me to show her where the fruit was. She was…