Porcini mushroom risotto, my grandma’s recipe

I spent the whole weekend working at home but I made it, I finished the book translation. When last night I was stuck in the traffic on the freeway clogged up by the renewal works I was happy, jammed, lit by the red shades of the car stoplights, but happy. I was done. A strange sense of lightness mixed with the anxiety due to the unknown future made me euphoric. And then I finally ate a great risotto with porcini mushrooms to celebrate the moment…

Grandma, dad and the mushrooms

When autumn comes my grandmother becomes restless, she looks at the sky, at the forest, listening to the stories of the other inhabitants of our village. She begins to get the right tools ready: comfortable shoes, long trousers, a long-sleeved shirt, a walking cane and a wicker basket. I do not know how many times during my primary school she would make me a good lunch and she would run away, she had to get into the woods before dark, searching for mushrooms.

She always loved to venture herself into the woods or in the pine forest, silent, examining with her expert eyes every corner under the oaks or bushes of sorghum. Then Grazia and Maura, my grandmother’s friends, came into our family and the wood and the mushrooms became an unmissable appointment in autumn, a chance to spend some time with friends. Now, Grazia, Maura and grandma are well-known for venturing deep into the woods, getting lost a few times and every time coming back home by a different route, but always bringing something interesting and good in their baskets.

Dad has an extraordinary eye for mushrooms, too.

He rarely ventures himself into the wood searching for mushrooms, but when he takes the basket and goes, he has always something interesting for us. During my university years, we went to visit a friend with the whole family in the woods around Montieri. We were walking along a forest path to digest a generous lunch of grilled meat and sausages, when my dad left the group, went into the scrub and shortly after came out with a porcini. This happened several times, leaving all the group amazed and filling with pride in the heart of his daughter.

My grandma’s porcini mushroom risotto

Last Friday grandma, dad and Claudia went searching for mushrooms again and came back home with a few porcini. The time had come to make my grandma’s porcini mushroom risotto…

This is how we usually make risotto at home, classic for us, heretic for the real tradition of risotto, let’s face it. No butter but good extra virgin olive oil, plus the risotto creaminess is due to an energetic stirring of the rice throughout the cooking, as to naturally massage the creamy starch out of the rice. If you prefer, you can still use butter instead of olive oil and add a knob of butter and a good handful of Parmigiano at the end, out of the stove, to cream the risotto.

If you do not have fresh porcini mushrooms you can still use frozen ones, even though the risotto won’t have the same intensity, or a sachet of good quality dried porcini. I admit I used often frozen porcini, nobody’s perfect.

You can also find this porcini mushroom risotto in my upcoming book, it is almost ready. Let’s say this is a sneak preview all for you!

When in London, in my beloved English kitchen (I mean, it is not mine, but I feel at home there) I followed the same process used to make this risotto with porcini mushrooms to make a risotto with fresh chanterelles bought at Borough Market for Sarka and Regula. So, once you have a method, use it for the mushrooms you prefer and let me know!

Link Love

Here’s a list of other favourite mushroom recipes to bookmark for your lucky days, when someone will gift you with a basked crammed of underwood scented mushrooms.

• Green Kitchen Stories – Portobello and peach burger, vegetarian and mouthwatering, unusual to surprise you dear ones.
• What Katie ate – Rustic mushroom toasts, who wouldn’t be woken up by such a delicious looking toast for breakfast?
• Katie at the kitchen door – Mushroom and farro soup, healthy and warming for the first autumn evenings.
• Tartelette – Scrambled egg tartines with parsley and garlic mushrooms and Creamy polenta with Russian kale and Shitake mushrooms… I just couldn’t choose just one recipe, tartines or polenta? both!
• Last but not least, one of my favourite mushroom recipes from the blog archive: a porcini, potato and chestnut soup.

Related posts:

Pumpkin risotto. Valentine’s Day and a novice in the kitchen Risotto with apples and smoked trout. Celebrating the apple season Giulia’s Sense of Fashion. Butternut squash risotto with clams Orzotto ai finferli, a chanterelle barley risotto for one