Preparing the Mushrooms for Risotto

Hi, I am Sam, the chef of Pomodoro in Fairfax. We are going to talk about Porcini Mushroom Risotto. Our next step in the process is the porcini mushrooms, which are over here. We are going to bring over here. The first thing we are going to do is, we are going to cut the stems off, and I am going to remove the bowl so you guys can see whats going on. We are going to take the stems off, we are going to cut and leave them aside. We are going to do it nice and quickly, just cutting the stems off. We are going to use this to fortify our stock, and thats later in our dish, which is set right here. We are going to let them boil a little bit in the stock so we get a little bit of the flavor of the porcini. So, let's just continue prepping, just slicing the ends of the root, pretty easy. Slice, it's pretty easy no? Just cutting and going.

Let's do another time. Let's just dump this thing, leave it here, bring this guy here. Just leave everything to the side, cutting our ends off. Something about the porcini mushroom, it goes a long way, has lots and lots of flavor. It's not actually like your regular Button Mushroom. It has lots of flavor. If you try this dish you'll know what I am talking about. Once you got rid of stems, you want to put them in here. The next thing we are going to do is going to wipe everything off, because we dont any dirt. So, we are just going to take a simple towel, just take off any excess -- as you see it's on the board right now. We have some things that we dont want. We are going to do that. See what I am talking about, we dont want this, none of that. Not too hard, just the basic wipe. It's like wax on, wax off. I got jokes too. So, basically, what we did now, we took the stems and we set aside. Now, what we are looking for is a uniform cut, because obviously, it all needs to cook at the same time. So, if you've got one which is humongous piece and if have a piece like this, it's not going to cook at same time. So, what we are going to try to do is a uniform cut. So, let's get started. Take our mushroom; we are going to slice long ways. You see, how I am running the knife against my knuckles. There's no way cutting my fingers or anything like that. Thats what we are doing, just slicing, slightly. It's never going to be just perfect by the way. There's no such thing as perfection in the kitchen. See, I am just letting the knife do the work. I am not pulling, I am not chopping. I am just slicing, just running it along my knuckles. It's pretty basic. There we go, it's pretty much done. We are going to place it in a clean bowl. Then we are going to get started on cooking our items one by one.