On a recent trip to Florence my wife and I stumbled across a wine shop that also served pretty extraordinary food.  One of the dishes they started with was a roasted porcini mushroom with a poached egg both served atop a bit of soft pecorino cheese that had been melted with a touch of cream into almost a fondue-like texture.  It seemed to me to be possibly the most quintessential Italian dish my wife and I enjoyed in Italy…and we ate a lot at a lot of different restaurants, trying the local fare on a variety of levels.  Anyway, this dish is simple and elegant, using local, seasonal ingredients, and taking those simple ingredients and making them way greater than the sum of their individual parts.  I tried several times to recreate this dish at home and this recipe represents the best results I’ve achieved thus far.  I use Portobello mushrooms as we do not really have access to fresh porcinis in New Jersey (as far as I know) but you can certainly adapt the recipe to use whichever mushroom you like.  However, I would stay away from dried mushrooms and stick with a fresh variety.  As a bonus, just as our waiter told us, you can adapt this dish to whatever is in season.  We were there during porcini season.  They serve the same dish using asparagus, artichokes, etc…whatever is freshest and tastes best at that particular moment during the year.  I love it!  So, I hope you enjoy this dish as much as we did.

Serve as a starter for a dinner party or if it’s just for you and your family, serve it alongside a salad and you will be good to go.  In Florence, it was served inside a small Mason jar.  So feel free to use that or simply serve in a small ramekin.

Note:  Look for soft pecorino cheese.  The regular dry aged pecorino cheese commonly found alongside Parmesan cheese in the grocery stores simply will not work as it will not melt into a creamy fondue.  Recipe follows after the jump… Continue reading →