Those Porcini Star in Santa Fiora

In mid-October in central Italy, many are hunting wild mushrooms or gathering chestnuts – or simply feasting on both of them. Countless sagre – food festivals – fête the October woodland goodness.

On a recent week-end, Pino and I headed west to southern Tuscany for the Santa Fiora Sagra del Fungo Amiatino (“Festival of the Mushrooms of Monte Amiata”). The mountain road serpentined past medieval villages and in and out of towering woods of the coveted chestnut trees Monte Amiata.

Just past Piancastagnaio (“plain of the chestnuts”), medieval Tuscan hill town on the slopes of Monte Amiata, we passed an ebullient group coming out of the forest with baskets and bags bulging with woodland yield. “Forse porcini!” (“Maybe porcini mushrooms”), I exclaimed to Pino who pulled off to the side of the road for me. Putting down walking sticks and glad to show me their windfall, they opened sacks full of chestnuts. They lived in Umbria (not far from Montefalco) but knew where to head for chestnut abundance.

We chatted about porcini and chestnuts and Monte Amiata before we continued onwards to Santa Fiora and the mushroom festival. And when we left, a bag of chestnuts was in our car…

We knew we’d arrived at the town famous for porcini as soon as we sited the village hotel: a mushroom on the dangling sign. We parked nearby and followed the signs indicating the entrance to “Sagra dei funghi.”

At the sagra entrance, porcini welcomed me right away: a man was sitting on a wall before a giant mushroom, three crates of porcini beside him. Moreno – the name of this local “fungaiolo” – had found them just hours before and was taking them to the sagra. I asked him at what age he’d started hunting wild mushrooms and I think my question perplexed him: “I was five – but here in the Santa Fiora area, we ALL hunt mushrooms at an early age.” As verification, he stopped an elderly man heading to the sagra tent, Vero. “Tu, a quanti anni, Vero?” Even younger: when he was four.

With a smile, Moreno told me, “I even missed my first day of school because of the mushrooms: hunting them, I slipped in the woods and cracked my head on a rock, right here….”

As Moreno and Vero headed to the food tents with Moreno’s porcini, Pino and I joined those lined up to order lunch. As we waited to order, we chatted with those in line, all appassioned of funghi and many, once funghaioli. Like Lucio, now living on the Tuscan coast with wife Luisa, but home every year for this festival. He talked with reverence about the respect for the funghaie (mushroom bed) instilled in him by his grandfather as they hunted mushrooms years ago. “You have to respect the forest, walking carefully, not collecting mushrooms which are too small – and never using plastic bags but only baskets so that the spores return to the earth,” he told us. “Respect is being lost these days…we’ll be finding fewer mushrooms,” he added seriously, with a frown.

Lunch choices were not easy: I wanted to try every funghi dish- and they highlighted many an antipasto, main dish – and of course, the prima (first courses):

Pino chose the crostini con funghi, followed by zuppa di funghi and then funghi fritti. I order the pasta dish with porcini and sausages, tagliatelle alla boscaiola (literally, “woodsman’s style”). For side dishes? Funghi trifolati and funghi arrosti: mushrooms sauteed with herbs and roasted porcini.

As at most sagras, young people set up the plank tables for diners and dash to and from the tent kitchen with the goodness cooked up by parents and nonni:

I had hoped to peek into the kitchen to see the mushroom dishes being created but did not wish to disturb cooks at work. But what a welcome from the cooks: “Disturbo? Perche’? Signora, venga!”
…and when I had photographed all the cooks at the giant pots of sauces, they made sure that I headed over to photograph the sweets crew, too:

The food tent was filling up with feasting families as we left, the lines outside growing longer, inspite of a light drizzle. Before heading back to Umbria, we wandered past the giant mushrooms where children played to the mostra micologica (“mushroom display”). Parents and children wandered the displays, chatting about edible mushrooms and poisonous ones. The porcini – Boletus – starred and caught Pino’s eye.