I first tasted this earthy wild mushroom spread at the home of my friend Vera, who lives across the street from me in Paris but is originally from Czech Republic. She served it on toast during cocktail hour and it knocked me out of my socks. The mushrooms – porcini, or cèpes in French – had been gathered by her nephew in a Czech forest and dried before being turned over to Vera. She brought them home, worked her magic and a recipe was born.
Crème à tartiner aux cèpes / Wild mushroom spread
Making the spread is simple. The dried mushrooms are boiled in water for about half an hour to rehydrate them. They are then chopped and mixed with cream cheese, minced red onion, fresh dill and freshly ground black pepper, with the optional addition of hot pepper. The spread may be made well ahead of time and any extra may be refrigerated or frozen.
Although Vera has lived in Paris for many years, she breaks with French tradition by serving the spread instead of, rather than ahead of, a first course. There is no other entrée – which confusingly translates from French as ‘first course’ while in English it means ‘main course’. (As an aside, it’s the English translation that’s confusing for those of us who live here because the entrée is the entry to the meal, which makes more sense…)
At a typical French dinner party, cocktails are accompanied only by a few random olives or nuts – the result being that conversation can be rather boisterous by the time guests get to the table. Vera’s reasoning is that serving something more substantial than peanuts allows guests to have a couple of drinks before dinner without getting completely fershnickered (Yiddish for high as a kite). So the wild mushroom canapés replace the first course.
Personally I like serving a bona fide starter ahead of the main course – so much so that there are more than 50 starter recipes on this site. But that’s not a problem, as one can do both. The key is to limit the number of canapés to, say, 2-3 per person. And then move to the table. For example, keeping with the eastern European theme, I might serve the wild mushroom spread at cocktail hour, followed by smoked herring as a starter and chicken with paprika as the main course, finishing up with linzertorte as a dessert.
I learned to make this wild mushroom spread about a year ago when Vera, upon returning from a visit to Czech Republic, kindly gave me a bag of dried porcini gathered by her nephew (at right, with a couple of prize specimens). When I asked her what to do with them, she gave me the recipe, which I immediately tried. Judging by the response, it was a success.
The mushrooms Vera brings back hail from a forest outside the hamlet of Resek in the Krkonoše Mountains on the border between Czech Republic and Poland. The nephew’s family has a shed with drying racks ready to receive the mushrooms, which are first sliced (as shown at left). There’s a lot of competition for these mushrooms, which only sprout when the weather is right. Drying allows the family to enjoy them year round.
The hardest part of this recipe may well be getting hold of the dried porcini if one does not happen to have a nephew living near a Czech forest. I found some in Paris at a store called Naturalia. Elsewhere, they are available for order online.
Happy cooking.
