#Lucca: Spaghetti and Pioppini Mushrooms; last sweet tomatoes in Tuscany...thanks to this strange weather!

Spaghetti Pioppini Mushroooms Sauce

On sunny Winter days, when you go out for a walk and the cold tickles your face, nothing’s more beautiful than going to the fruit and vegetable Market. Sometimes I go near my house, to San Giuliano Terme Market, others I go to Pisa, in Piazza Vettovaglie and then I can not help but make a leap to my University Faculty of Political Sciences, which is right near there and where I spent the most beautiful five years of my life.

Today I did a small tour to the Market of Vecchiano and I could not help but buying some great “pioppini”; who knows how to call them abroad?
They are mushrooms that grow at the foot of the poplar trees (hence the name) and can be both cultivated or wild.

The wild ones, in principle, are light in color; while those cultured have a long beige stem and a dark brown small chapel.
In my opinion they’re almost different kinds of mushrooms, both delicious, much different in the taste.
During these days you can find just cultivated “pioppini”.
Yes I know it’s December, but here in Tuscany you can still find delicious and sweet tomatoes… are just the last ones 🙁

Anyway I wan’t lose my “tomato vice”…Fifty jars with “pummarola” (Tomato sauce which I made in August) are waiting for me for the forwarded Winter…alè!
Pioppini mushrooms are delicious with a “white” sauce, but I love them with tomatoes, because my grandmother prepared them in this way and when I remind my childhood, there is nothing to do, I give up and follow the memories.

And this is the way I teach to prepare them during our Cooking Classes in Tuscany and my students are always satisfied about their “yummy” lunch or dinner.

What is the most suitable pasta for Pioppini?

Surely Spaghetti, though Vermicelli, with their pulpy “thickness”, are in my opinion the ones that give more satisfaction.

Spaghetti Pioppini Mushrooms Sauce

Recipe by Erika Elia

Prep time: 20 minutes
Cook time: 30 minutes
Total time: 50 minutes

Ingredients

13 oz Spaghetti or Vermicelli
14 oz Fresh Tomatoes (Piccadilly, Pachino, S.Marzano))
1,1 lbs Pioppini mushrooms
to cover the pan bottom Extra Virgin Olive Oil
to taste salt
2 springs calamint or thyme
1,5 garlic clove
small bunch parsley
1/2 glass white wine

Cooking Directions

For the Sauce:
Clean the mushrooms by removing the final earty part of the stalk
soak in a bowl for about 3 minutes and dry on kitchen paper
Cut the tomatoes (after passed them under water) in small pieces and leave on the skin
put them to drain in a coliander and salt them a bit
cut coarsely the mushrooms on a cutboard, helping you with a big knife
pour the Evo oil in a large pan with the minced garlic and the calamint
as soon as you hear the sizzle, pour in the mushrooms
mix with a wooden spoon and pour the wine, waiting for the wine smell to go away
add the chopped tomatoes and mix again
wait around 30 minutes, stirring occasionnaly
taste and season with the salt
pioppini mushrooms are ready when the stalks are soft and not crunchy under your teeth
If you need Pasta Cooking Directions go directly here at the end of this post.
when Pasta is ready
drain it in a coliander and pour in the pan when you cooked Pioppini, high fire, about 1 minute
sprinkle with fresh minced parsley just before to serve