I went rock climbing for the second time ever last week and I swear I thought my arms were going to fall off as I started cutting into the porcini. I was soo thankful that I had cleaned and cut the leeks the day before.  Leeks are super dirty so you have to be really careful and clean them really well. I ended up plugging my sink and filling it with water and slicing up the leeks and letting them soak in the sink overnight on Sunday night. Then when I woke up Monday morning I drained the sink, put the leeks in a colander and rinsed them off again before sticking them in a tupperware in the fridge so they would be ready later in the week. As I said, my arms hurt so badly from rock climbing so I was really thankful for the foresight!

I was starving after rock climbing for nearly 3 hours and couldn’t wait to get the porcinis in the pan although my arms were stinging while I held the knife. So my cutting of the porcinis was not as precise and beautiful as in the previous post, but unfortunately you will not be able to see the photo-documentation of this as I accidentally left the memory card outside of my camera while I was preparing this meal so all of the pictures that I thought I had taken do not exist! Drat! At least I got a beautiful picture of the finished product :)

Something to keep in mind is that the Boletus barrowsii turns a bit purple after cutting it and it seems a bit alarming when cooking them and they start to turn purple, but I ate them on Sunday night and I’m still alive :)  To speed things up I heated up two pans with olive oil, filled one with leeks and the other with porcinis, and left them to saute for a long time while I worked on writing this. You really want to just leave them alone for a while so they cook enough and get nice and browned. Once the leeks were well cooked, I decided to toss in some fresh thyme that I had sitting in my fridge leftover from one of my recipes from last week. Then I cracked 8 eggs, added salt, pepper, and oregano, and then whisked it really well before pouring the eggs over the leeks. Next, I added the browned porcinis and let it set up in the pan a bit. At that point I realized that I had completely forgotten to preheat the oven so I turned it on and let the eggs sit on the counter while it heated up – it’s just a simple frittata so I figured it should be fine! I also remembered that I had 8 oz of fresh mozzarella in my fridge and I only needed 4 oz for my next recipe so I went ahead and chopped that up and added it to the frittata for good measure. My friend and former California Mushrooms student Claire (featured in this post) came over to enjoy the frittata with me and she loved it!  This turned out to be a super simple and filling meal that worked great as leftovers throughout the week. It also tasted really delicious when accompanied by the sorrel sauce that will be featured in the next post!

Porcini and leek frittata