Toasted bread with porcini mushrooms

(German version below)

Unfortunately, I did not have much time to cook today. For one thing, I had or wanted to do some work – yes, even if it was Sunday – on the other hand, there were a few things to do, such as tidying up and doing the laundry. Not to forget about ironing …
So I had to look for something out of my newly won cookbooks that is quick and easy.

My choice was Bruschette con funghi porcini trifolati – toasted bread with cooked porcini mushrooms. The beauty of this dish is that it is incredibly simple and cooks itself after preparing the ingredients. There is no real origin of this dish and “trifolati” is a common preparation for cooking mushrooms and other vegetables as well.

Let’s go! The ingredients are very manageable:

Anyway, again I have prepared everything first, although I think I would have got it without this time as well. But as always: safety first!

Then I heated the olive oil and about 2/3 of the butter in the pan on a medium flame and seared the two garlic cloves in it. After they were slightly brown, I took them out again.

After that, the mushrooms came into the pan and were immediately covered with a lid. The mushrooms were allowed to sizzle for about 15 minutes without me having to take care of them. Ok, I’m honest, I stirred them twice during that time.

Shortly before the end of the cooking time, after almost all the water had evaporated, I then added the parsley and seasoned with salt and pepper and simmer again for a few minutes. Before taking the porcini out of the pan, I have stirred in the remaining butter.

Only the bread is missing! I bought this at a small “panineria artigianale” one street further. That’s one of the things I like about Italy so much! There are still many small bakeries, greengrocers etc. who sell their self-produced goods. These here are producing their bread even from organically grown old wheat varieties – no Mon***** stuff. You can tell by the fact that I had bought the bread last Tuesday and it was still fresh today, six days later.

I made four bruschettas, of which I easily fried two in the remaining oil in the pan. The other two I toasted in the toaster – keyword beach shape!

What can I say? Apart from the spices, the dish consists only of porcini mushrooms. Who like them as I do will love this dish. Especially because it is really fast and easy. With garlic, salt and pepper you should perhaps hold back a little to not overlap the taste of mushrooms too much. You can also prepare the mushrooms in the same way as a side dish or as an antipasti.

Before I forget it … the bread slices that I had fried in the rest of the oil in the pan were better than those out of the toaster 🙂

Geröstetes Brot mit Steinpilzen

Heute hatte ich leider nicht ganz so viel Zeit zum Kochen. Zum einen musste oder wollte ich noch etwas Arbeiten – ja auch wenn Sonntag ist – zum anderen waren noch ein paar Dinge wie Aufräumen und Wäsche waschen zu erledigen. Von Bügeln mal ganz abzusehen…
Ich musste mir also etwas aus meinen neu gewonnenen Kochbüchern suchen, dass schnell und einfach geht.

Meine Wahl fiel auf Bruschette con funghi porcini trifolati – geröstetes Brot mit gegarten Steinpilzen. Das Schöne an dem Gericht ist, dass es wirklich unglaublich einfach ist und sich nach dem Vorbereiten der Zutaten quasi von selbst kocht. Eine wirkliche Herkunft dieses Gerichts gibt es nicht und „trifolati“ ist eine gängige Zubereitungsart zum Garen von Steinpilzen und auch von anderem Gemüse.

Also los! Die Zutaten sind sehr Überschaubar:

Naja, wieder habe ich zuerst einmal alles Vorbereitet obwohl ich denke, dass ich es hierbei auch so geschafft hätte. Aber wie immer gilt: Sicherheit zuerst!

Dann habe ich das Olivenöl und ungefähr 2/3 der Butter in der Pfanne auf mittlerer Flamme erhitzt und die beiden Knoblauchzehen darin angebraten. Nach dem diese leicht braun waren habe ich sie wieder herausgenommen.

Danach kamen die Pilze in die Pfanne und wurden sofort mit einem Deckel abgedeckt. Die Pilze durften dann alleine ungefähr 15 Minuten vor sich hin brutzeln ohne dass ich mich um sie kümmern musste. Ok, ich bin ehrlich, ich habe sie zweimal umgerührt in dieser Zeit.

Kurz vor Ende der Garzeit, nachdem fast die ganze, aus den Pizen ausgetretene Flüssigkeit verdampft war, habe ich die Petersilie dazu gegeben und das Ganze mit etwas Salz und Pfeffer abgeschmeckt und nochmal ein paar Minuten brutzeln lassen. Vor dem herausnehmen aus der Pfanne habe ich noch schnell die restliche Butter untergerührt.

Fehlt nur noch das Brot! Das habe ich bei einer kleinen „panineria artigianale“ eine Straße weiter gekauft. Das ist eines der Dinge die mir an Italien so sehr gefallen! Es gibt noch viele kleine Bäckereien, Gemüsehändler etc. die ihre selbst produzierten Waren verkaufen. Diese hier backt ihr Brot eben auch noch selbst aus biologisch angebauten alten Weizensorten – kein Mon***** kram.
Das merkt man daran, dass ich das Brot am letzten Dienstag gekauft hatte und es Heute, sechs Tage später, immer noch frisch war.

Ich habe vier Bruschette zubereitet, wovon ich zwei im Restlichen Öl in der Pfanne leicht angebraten habe. Die anderen Zwei habe ich im Toaster getoastet – Stichwort Strandfigur!

Was soll ich sagen? Abgesehen von den Gewürzen besteht das Gericht nur aus Steinpilzen. Wem die schmecken, so wie mir, der wird dieses Gericht lieben. Vor allem weil es wirklich schnell und einfach ist. Mit Knoblauch, Salz und Pfeffer sollte man sich vielleicht etwas Zurückhalten um den Geschmack der Steinpilze nicht zu sehr zu überlagern.
Man kann die Pilze auf die gleiche Art und Weise aber auch als Beilage zubereiten oder als Antipasti essen.

Bevor ich es vergesse…die Brotscheiben die ich im restlichen Öl in der Pfanne angebraten hatte waren besser als die aus dem Toaster 🙂

Who am I and why am I writing a blog? The one I can not really answer, the other I do not really want to answer. I was born and raised in Germany. As a little boy I liked Italian cars – sure!
I became older and adult – the latter at least a bit – and at some point I started to like Italian food as well. To be honest, I generally like good food. The entire Mediterranean cuisine, I like very much. However, my absolute favorite is by far the Italian cuisine.

Due to some unforeseen things, it has turned out that I live in Italy now. More precisely, in Tuscany. A few days ago I moved to my new apartment and the previous tenant left me a whole collection of Italian cookbooks.

Challenge accepted!

At the same time, I read an article about blogging, which is probably why I write this now. Maybe this blog serves me in the end only as a recipe collection.
Who knows?
So I’m curious if I have the stamina to cook through my new cookbooks and at the same time to write about it. At first the odds are good, because I like eating for my life. I live near the sea. Therefore, I have to do a lot of sports to keep my shape despite the food. So the odds for continuous writing are not that good.

And the worst, sometimes I even have to work!

Pasta alla puttanesca – Pasta by bitch style

What does the first dish on my blog say about me? Hopefully, only that sometimes I like to eat spicy and hot. This is also the only small criticism I have at the Italian kitchen. It is usually quite mild. Especially in the north where I live. The further south you go the more often you will find spicy dishes such as the much better known spaghetti all’arrabbiata or ‘nduja. Therefore, I was very happy to have found this dish and have only later in the research seen what puttanesca actually means.

As with most dishes, there are different legends where it comes from. Some date back to the mid-19th century where, depending on the source, brothel owners in Rome or Naples, they offered it to their customers.
Others indicate the origin on the island of Ischia and explain the name with the indiscriminate throwing together of ingredients that were just there and thus on a somewhat sloppy preparation.

The olives, capers, hot peppers and garlic taste very strong in this dish which is rare for the rather mild Italian cuisine. Typical, however, are the few and simple ingredients with which a very tasty tomato-based sauce is prepared which differs in taste clearly from others.

The ingredients for two servings are:

Anchovies are often added. Hence I’m not a friend of anchovies, I have left them away.

First, the tomatoes are peeled. I do not know if there are several procedures. I always cut them on one side and then drop them briefly into boiling water. After that, the skin can be easily removed.

As you can see in the pictures, I first chopped all the ingredients and prepared everything. This is a bit time consuming but then I have no hassle later. Maybe I can do that better someday but at the moment it is so much safer.

When everything was ready, I heated the olive oil in the pan and fry the garlic clove until light brown. Mostly of the garlic is taken out afterwards. In this dish, the garlic is often finely chopped and stays in the pan.

Then I added the tomatoes and slowly boiled them by medium heat. After about 10 minutes, I then put the finely chopped olives, capers and peppers and most of the parsley in the pan and simmer the whole thing on low heat for about 15 minutes.

At the same time, I brought the water for the pasta to boil. For every 100g of pasta, it should be 1 liter of water and 10g of salt. It is important to put the salt into the water after it is started boiling. After the pasta had done more than half the cooking time, I drained it and put it into the pan to the souce. During this time, the souce and the pasta in the pan must be stirred frequently so that nothing burns. In addition, from time to time, some of the boiling water of the pasta is added to the pan. The amount is hard to say, so that the souce does not burn but also not too liquid. The starch that has dissolved in it acts like a natural glue and ensures that the souce gets creamier and gets a nice consistency.

After the pasta in the pan finished or better became “al dente”, I have put it from the stove and on a plate. Finally, garnish with some pecorino and parsley. Here I made a small mistake. The pecorino I used was still very young and soft. According to the recipe I followed older Pecorino should be used. This is then firmer and tastes much stronger what better fits the generally strong taste of this dish better.

The olives and capers make it slightly sour and, together with the hot peppers, very spicy. There is a clear difference in taste to the pasta dishes on tomato basis I ate in the past. In any case, it was super delicious and I’m glad that my first attempt was successful right away.

Another small note: to dishes that contain fish in Italy, they will not be eaten with cheese, as fish and cheese are considered inappropriate. Since I have refrained from the anchovies, but I may peacefully give the cheese over it.

Oh dear…writing this text took longer than cooking…