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Dried Mushrooms
(Funghi secchi) Mushrooms are an excellent condiment of various dishes and for this reason it is well to have some always at hand. Since, however, it is not always possible to have them fresh, the following recipe to prepare dried mushrooms will be found useful.
First of all wait until there is a sunny day Choose young mushrooms middle sized or big, but not too soft. Scrape the stem, clean them well in order to remove the earth and, without washing cut them in big pieces. This because when dried they diminish considerably in size. Keep these pieces exposed in the sun for two or three days, then thread them on a string (practising a hole in them) and keep in a well ventilated room or in the sun until they become quite dry. Then put them away well closed in a paper bag, but don't fail to look at them from time to time to see if it is necessary to expose them some more to sun and ventilation.
To use them soften in warm water, but keep them in as little as possible, so that they do not lose their delicate flavor. The best time to dry the mushrooms is June or July. 100
This is a preserving method rather than a dish, and it works exactly as written provided the weather cooperates. The hinge is dryness: mushrooms that feel leathery rather than brittle will mould in the bag within weeks.
- What mushrooms these areAn Italian cook writing about funghi secchi most often means porcini (Boletus edulis), though the term covers other dried wild species too; the scraped stem and the warning against flesh that is "too soft" both suit a bolete. Cultivated cremini and portobello dry acceptably; button mushrooms dry to little flavour. If you are gathering wild boletes, be certain of the identification before drying, since drying conceals the bruising and pore colour that help distinguish species.
- Do not washThis instruction is not fussiness. Wet mushrooms take far longer to dry and are the usual cause of a spoiled batch. Brush and scrape, and pare away anything you cannot clean dry.
- Sun drying in practiceTwo or three days of open sun works in a dry Mediterranean summer and rarely elsewhere. In humid climates use a dehydrator at 125-135F for 6-10 hours, or an oven at its lowest setting, 150-170F, with the door propped and the slices on racks. Anything hotter cooks them and dulls the flavour.
- Test for drynessProperly dried pieces snap cleanly and feel like thin wood. Any flex or coolness at the centre means more time. This is what the original is getting at when it tells you to keep checking them in storage.
- Slice thicknessCut pieces about a quarter to a half inch thick rather than the "big pieces" of the original if you want them to dry in a single session; the shrinkage the author warns about still leaves plenty of substance.
- StorageA paper bag suited a dry pantry and let residual moisture escape, which is why the recipe insists on repeated inspection. Once the mushrooms are truly brittle, glass jars with tight lids are better, kept dark. Freeze the jar for a few days first if you suspect insect eggs, which are common in wild boletes.
- RehydratingWarm water for 20-30 minutes is enough. The original's instruction to keep them in as little water, and as briefly, as possible is about not leaching the flavour out; the soaking liquid takes up a good deal of it, so strain it through a coffee filter to catch grit and add it to the sauce or risotto rather than pouring it away.
- YieldFresh mushrooms are roughly nine-tenths water, so expect somewhere around 1.5 oz dried from a pound of fresh, and reckon on 1/2 to 1 oz dried to flavour a dish for four.
Dried porcini were for centuries the way northern Italian kitchens kept the taste of autumn woodland available in February, and the method here — sun, then a string, then a ventilated room — is a traditional one. The reference to June or July points to the summer flush of boletes in the Apennines and Alpine foothills, earlier than the better-known September crop, and to the practical fact that only high summer supplies the reliable heat and low humidity the method depends on. That the text calls them a "condiment" is telling: in this tradition they were rarely the substance of a dish, but the thing that gave depth to a sauce, a risotto or a stew, which is why a cook book took the trouble to explain how to keep a supply in the pantry when fresh ones were unobtainable.