You Can't Get Anymore Italian than Pork and Porcini

Pork Chops Porcini.  I don't know how I made it to this age (eleventy-seven) and being Italian, having never cooked with porcini mushrooms. I've eaten them in restaurants but never attempted cooking with them. Until I opened the book:  Essentials of Italian Cooking. The Pork Chop above is complex in flavor and in preparation--well, at least for me--so I served it with simple baby boiled potatoes with butter and parsley and a side salad.  The photos don't do it justice. This sauce and the chop melt in your mouth.

Serve the dish with a big wine. If you're a wine connoisseur, you'll know what that means. If you're not, here's a hint: big wine does not mean a box of Reunite from Costco. Sorry, I can't describe "big" anymore than that. I'm flyin' by the seat of my pants here when it comes to trying to cook and drink like I know what I'm doing.

The recipe calls for four pork chops, Italian plum tomatoes, dry white wine, heavy whipping cream, porcini mushrooms, white button mushrooms, butter, vegetable oil, salt, pepper.  The porcini mushrooms are reconstituted in water for 30 minutes, then squeezed out and chopped. The water is saved and filtered. The chops are browned then the wine, cream, tomatoes and porcini's are added and simmered for 45 minutes.

Now the complex part: Another pan!  The white button mushrooms are sliced and sauteed in oil (and if you're me, butter too) until all the liquid is absorbed. Then they are further sauteed in the porcini mushroom water which you have filtered and boiled down (yes even more pots and pans). The mushrooms above are crowded in my small frying pan. Julia Child would whip me with a wet fettucini noodle for that.  Never crowd your mushrooms! After that, they're added to the pork chops pan and cooked 5 more minutes.

As they'd say in our house: Zitto e Mangia!