Porcini: How to find them?
By Daniel Butler, author and forager
Britain has scores of delicious mushrooms and everyone has a favourite. Truffles, chanterelles, horn of plenty and hedgehog are arguably best for flavour, while many think chicken- and hen of the woods have a better texture. For most of us, however, Boletus edulis beats them in importance. This is because they are big, preserve brilliantly and when dried are almost the only wild mushroom to be found on our supermarket shelves. If you’ve eaten wild mushrooms in a restaurant, it was probably flavoured with ‘the king’.
Penny bun, cepe, porcino or prawdziwke - surely the king of mushrooms?
(Photo: author’s own)
In theory we Brits call them penny bun but in practice almost everyone knows them by either their French or Italian name. Until recently cepe was the norm, but more recently the Italian celebrity chef, Antonio Carluccio, popularised them as porcini and this is how the dried version is generally labelled in shops.
Elsewhere, in Germany they are steinpilz (stone mushroom); in Austria herrenpilz (gentleman’s mushroom); in Dutch eekoorntjesbrood (squirrel’s bread) while to the Spanish they are panza (belly) and the Albanian barkushke means the same. Further east the Russian is bely grib (white mushroom) and for the Poles they are prawdziwke (true mushroom).
Boletus edulis, B. pinophilus or B. reticulatus - does it matter?
(Photo: author’s own)
By the way, although the true cepe/porcino is Boletus edulis, there are several relatives which look almost identical: B. pinophilus, B. aureus, B. reticulatus and B. aestivalis. The main differences are found on the stalks or in the habitats where they are found. This shouldn’t bother the beginner. While some gastronomes attempt to rank them in terms of quality, I have never been able to tell the difference – particularly once they’ve been dried.
Impressive hauls can be quick
(Photo: author’s own)
All this suggests they are somehow exotic and rare. This is far from the case: it is one of the commonest summer and autumn mushrooms in my Mid Wales hunting grounds and its size means that when encountered hauls can be impressive. For example, last year I picked 15 kg in ten minutes and had to leave as many behind because I simply couldn’t carry them back to the car.
This doesn’t mean finding them for the first time is necessarily easy. Many guidebooks suggest searching mature broadleaf woodland. This is because the first food writers to cover the subject, Elizabeth David and Jane Grigson, turned to the Continent for guidance and were taken to one of the huge deciduous oak and beech forests that cloak Italian and French landscapes. Thus they, and more recently Carluccio, send beginners here.
Mature conifer plantations offer some of the best hunting grounds
(Photo: author’s own)
Unfortunately, broadleaf woods are in short supply in most of Britain and the majority is privately-owned. In contrast most conifer plantations are publicly owned and managed with open access policies. Both woodland types are relatively common in my neck of the woods and in my experience conifer blocks prove much richer hunting grounds.
The plantation’s age is important. There is no point scrabbling among tiny trees which could make a family Christmas focus point. Nor are you likely to find much in an neglected aging wood. This is even more true when the tops are laden with cones which is a sure sign of stress. Instead, the best prospects are mature, healthy, woods. Mossy banks indicate the ideal damp conditions loved by the fungi.
They generally grow along paths and rides, rather than deep in the gloom. This because the trees on the edge get more light so can photosynthesise more sugars to pass to the fungi wrapped around their roots.
‘Where there’s a queen look for the king’ - look closely at the above
(Photo: author’s own)
Even when frequent, porcini are surprisingly well camouflaged. They can be big, but their brown caps blend in with the gloomy forest floor. As a result, it is often the pale stalks which first catch the eye. A good tip is to look for the far more visible fly agaric. This is the classic ‘toadstool’ with its red, white-flecked, cap and it loves the same conditions as porcini. Indeed, in the USA there is an expression ‘Where there’s a queen [fly agaric], look for the king [cepe]’.
Good Hunting!