Savory Porcini Mushroom Pie

The porcini season has started at last. Our forests are harboring so many delicious mushrooms at the moment, and we are so fond of looking for (and picking) them! And our favorites are the porcini, or penny buns, or cep (in Dutch their name is eekhoorntjesbrood, which means 'bread for squirrels'...). At this time of the year we use them every day of the week for cooking a great risotto ai funghi, baking them for accompanying the meat, making gorgeous omelets with them, or we dry them on the warming plate of the Aga for later use.

Today, I have made a great savory pie.....
This recipe is based on puff pastry. And because I dislike the deep frozen ready to use puff pastry you can buy in the supermarket, I always prepare some myself. Not the difficult way, but so-called rough puff pastry. This is how I do it:

 Ingredients:
- 250 g wheat flour
- 250 g cold salted butter
- 125 g ice cold water
- 4 g salt

Method:
Mix the flour with the salt and mix in the butter, which has been cut in small cubes (let the butter become ice cold for this: put it in the freezer for half an hour or so). I use my KitchenAid for this. What a perfect machine that is! When the mass is transformed to a substance that looks like bread crumb, you can add the water and transform it into a ball of dough. Don't knead it! Wrap it in plastic and put it in the freezer for at least half an hour.
Put your dough on a lightly floured working surface and roll it out to a 10 x 30 cm rectangle. Fold the end which is closest to you over the dough for one third and fold the other end over it. Now you end up with a perfect(!) square. Turn the dough 90 degrees and repeat this process. Don't expect that this is an easy job! The dough will become better to handle later on...
Wrap your dough in plastic again and put it back in the freezer for at least half an hour.
Once the pastry has rested follow the rolling and folding process again; after half an hour in the freezer the pastry is ready for use. Now the moment has come to make your pie.

Ingredients:
- 100 g peeled and chopped walnuts
- 3 chopped shallots
- 2 chopped cloves of garlic
- 200 g bacon in small strips
- (at least) 500 g sliced fresh porcini
- a splash of olive oil
- a bunch of fresh thyme, finely chopped
- a bunch of chopped parsley
- 4 eggs
- 150 g heavy cream
- pepper (and perhaps some salt)

Method:
Heat the olive oil in a large skillet on the hot plate and cook and stir the shallot in it until tender. Add the bacon and after a few minutes the garlic and the mushrooms. Now transfer your skillet to the simmering plate and let it cook until the mushrooms are reduced to about half. Season to taste with pepper (and perhaps some salt). Now put the mixture in a mixing bowl, add the walnuts and in case the mixture is very wet, poor most of the moist in the skillet again and let it reduce on the hot plate. Add the reduced moist to the mixture again and let it cool down a bit.

Now put the puff pastry in a 24 cm spring form pan (greased and floured) and line bottom and sides. Beat the eggs with the cream and the herbs, mix it well with the mushroom filling and poor the mixture in you pan. Use some left over pastry to make a nice looking pie and brush it with some egg. Put the pie high in the baking oven for an hour at least, until the crust is golden. Very often I keep it in the oven for an hour and a half and cover the surface with a sheet of aluminium foil, to prevent it fromm getting too brown.

Klik hier om dit recept in het Nederlands te lezen.

Torta de Mele facile (simple apple tart)

There are so many ways to make an apple tart and most recipes are rather complicated. And they also take some time and skill. But this (Italian) recipe is that simple and the result is that delicious, that I consider it my favorite. I thank my friend Ellen for sharing this recipe!

Ingredients:
- 350 g self raising flour
- 225 g cold salted butter
- 1 teaspoon ground cinnamon
- some salt
- 125 g raisins (welded if dry)
- 175 g granulated sugar
-  75 g chopped walnuts
- 500 g apples (I always use 'goudreinet')
- lemon zest (from a whole lemon)
- 4 eggs
- cane sugar for finishing

Method:
For the ingredients mentioned above I use a backing pan which measures 24 cms. Grease it by using some melted butter and cover the bottom with baking paper. Mix the flour with the cinnamon, the salt and the butter (sliced in small pieces) until it looks like bread crumb. I use my KitchenAid for that. Then add the raisins, the walnuts, the lemon zest and the sugar. Use a rubber spatula for mixing. Now peel your apples, remove the cores and slice them. Add them to your mixture. In a separate bowl, beat the eggs and whisk them in the mixture..
Fill your baking pan and place it for about an hour and a half or more in the baking oven. After half an hour baking, cover the tart with some aluminium foil for about 45 minutes, to prevent the top from getting too dark.
Finish it using the cane sugar and let it cool on a rack before removing it from the baking pan. Buon appetito! 

PS: a good friend of mine who is on a strict gluten free diet is a great fan of this recipe. She uses a gluten free mixture instead of the self raising flour with great results. This easy way of making a tart needs no building up a base of dough, a task that is very difficult when you don't have any gluten in the dough. The product used for replacing the wheat flour is produced by a German company, named Schär. The product itself is named 'mixture C: Kuchen & Kekse". It is available in Europe, but I am not sure that it can be bought in the US.

Klik hier om dit recept in het Nederlands te lezen.

Risotto with Confit de Canard and Sulfur Fungus

 As I promised in one of my previous blogs I would post as soon as we found parasol mushrooms or porcini in the wild. But today we found a wonderful bunch of sulfur fungus... and a few baby porcini. So I made a great risotto, using the mushrooms and some delicious confit de canard (duck confit, or actually goose confit).

In almost every risotto recipe you are instructed to stir the boiling 'risotto to be' for almost 25 minutes. Because I think that (for instance) drinking wine is much more fun than stirring rice on a hot stove, you will find out that in my way of making risotto the AGA is doing most of the work. So I can have my glass of wine....

Ingredients:

- a bunch of sulfur fungus (about 250 g)

- some parsley

- olive oil

- 1 onion, chopped

- 1 clove of garlic, chopped

- 2 fresh bay leaves (or 1 if dried)

- about 5 or 6 branches of thyme

- 2 ready cooked goose or duck legs (confit de canard), about 500 g

- 300 g Alborio rice

- about 1 liter chicken broth

- 1 glass dry white wine

- salted butter

- 100 g grated cheese (not necessarily Parmesan!)

- salt and pepper

Method:
First prepare the mushrooms: clean and slice them and bake them in a small pan with some olive oil on the boiling plate for a few minutes. Add pepper and salt. Now transfer the mushrooms to the simmering oven (no lid on the pan yet) en let them simmer for 10 minutes. Take them out, add the chopped parsley and put the pan with the lid on on the warming plate.
Now it is time for the risotto! Prepare the risotto in a pan with a thick bottom (I use a cast iron one for this) and warm it on the boiling plate. Put a splash of olive oil in it (be generous!) and when the oil is (not to) hot, add the chopped onion and garlic. Stir for only a minute or so and transfer the pan to the simmering plate. After 2 or 3 minutes, add the rice and keep stirring until the rice has absorbed all the oil and becomes translucent. Prevent that the rice is sticking to the bottom of your pan! Then add the prepared mushrooms and the confit (of which you have removed the bones and have cut the meat in pieces). Stir for another 5 minutes, if necessary transferring the pan from the simmering plate to the boiling plate and back a few times.
Now add the white wine, stir until the rice has absorbed it and add all the broth in one time. Stir until the risotto is boiling (use the boiling plate). Add the herbs (thyme and bay leave), pepper and salt and put your risotto in the simmering oven for about 20 minutes. Don't put a lid on the pan.
You can take your risotto out a few times for stirring; do so if you feel the urge. But I don't think it is necessary.
After 20 minutes your risotto should be ready for finishing it. If not, leave it for some time in the simmering oven. You can find out by tasting it: the rice should be al dente.
Finish the risotto by adding a table spoon butter and some grated cheese. Stir well (if the risotto is to firm to your taste, you can add some hot water). Put the lid on the pan and leave it for a couple of minutes on the warming plate before serving. Buon appetito!