I love mushrooms! They are flavorful, delicious and powerful. With mushrooms you can miraculously whip up a sauce, a sidedish, you can make soup, add them to salad, you can upgrade almost any dish with mushrooms. Maybe except gelato. But I don’t eat gelato or icecream or sorbet stuff anyway.

Of all the mushrooms in the world – and fortunately I haven’t tried them all, because then I wouldn’t sit here and write anymore – I love porcini mushrooms the most. By far! Chanterelle are good too, but they take forever to clean. And porcinis seems to be the stronger flavor anyway. Big, bold, powerful. And not a lot of cleaning to do either. A win-win situation!

Being in northern Italy for the fall season is the best timing if you love porcini mushrooms. This area here is porcini heaven, every restaurant has porcini dishes, every store sells porcini something’s and vendors parked on the street don’t sell oranges like in California, but – guess what – porcini mushrooms!

In the last few weeks I made porcini risotto twice, I ate two porcini pizzas and I also had porcini ravioli today, with sage butter. Delicious!

Porcini risotto recipe

Arborio rice

Chopped onion

Chopped porcini mushrooms

White wine

Broth

Butter

Parmesan

Fry the onions in a pan until they’re transparent, then add the rice and the mushrooms. Fry everything until the rice starts to get some color.

Add white wine and stir until all the liquid is gone, turn down the heat and add broth, one half cup, stir until all the liquid is gone, then add broth, one half cup, stir until all the liquid is gone, and add broth, one half cup, stir until all the liquid is gone, and add broth, one half cup, stir until all the liquid is gone, and add broth, one half cup, stir until all the liquid is gone, and add broth, one half cup, stir until all the liquid is gone etc.

I always cook by listening to the rice. When you “hear” the rice while stirring, then you need more broth.

When you’re done, switch off the heat and stir in a good, a very good portion of butter. And a handful of Parmesan wouldn’t hurt either. Serve and enjoy with the rest of the white wine!

My sons loved this risotto! But since the color looks pretty ugly, a brown mess, they called this dish: prison food! And prison food they loved! Fortunately they never needed to go to prison to check if it’s the real deal 🤣