August 12, 2013 Orecchiette pasta with sautéed Chantrelle and Porcini mushrooms with purslane and grilled steak.

August 12, 2013 Orecchiette pasta with sautéed Chanterelle and Porcini mushrooms with purslane and grilled steak.

Suzette got inspired to make a dish with the lovely Wild Porcini and Chanterelle mushrooms we had bought at the Taos Farmers’ Market on Saturday.

She had found a recipe for making Orecchiette (singular, orecchietta), from orecchio (ear) + etto (small)) is a kind of home-made pasta typical of Puglia or Apulia, a region of southern Italy. Its name comes from its shape, which reminds one of a small ear.

She went by the Coop to buy some semolina flour and made the pasta dough while I sliced three porcini and a small handful of chantrelles.  After letting the pasta dough rest for thirty minutes, Suzette cut strips of pasta and rolled them into long tubes of pasta and we cut them into ¾ inch long pieces and flattened one end with a knife and then using our fingers pushed the pasta into small ear shaped pieces.

Then we heated water and put butter and olive oil into a large skillet to sauté the mushrooms and started heating the grill outside to grill the ribeye steak and went to the driveway to gather a large handful of purslane.  After cleaning and plucking the leaves from the stalks of purslane we put the slices of mushroom in the hot large skillet and began to sauté them.  Then Suzette began to grill the steak.

After about fi minutes we added the purslane to the skillet with the mushrooms.

After about fifteen minutes the mushrooms and the purslane were cooked and began to brown and steak was cooked to medium rare.

I wanted an interesting bottle of wine so I fetched a bottle of 2001 Villa Antinori that had been given to us for my 60^th birthday by Ranne and Margo Miller. The back label indicated that the wine was “60% Sangiovese, 20% Cabernet Sauvignon, 15% Merlot and 5% Syrah grapes, coming from the Antinori Vineyards in Tuscany.  The wine is refined for 12 months in oak casks followed by further 8 months in bottle prior to release.”  And I should add and 10 years in my cellar.  Needless to say the wine was terrific providing a huge mouthful of grape flavor that went well with the delicate wild mushrooms and strong steak flavor.

Bon Appétit