RCP: Fricasseed Chicken wuth Porcini and Marsala

Found this in Marcella's Cucina. Couldn't be more simple. Beautiful, complex flovors. Worked well with my chewy free range bird. The sauce was excellent over polenta made with some milk.

1 oz dried porcini soaked 30 min in warm water. Squeezed dry, finely chop. Strain and save water
3 1/2 # chicken cut into pieces. Floured and browned in a mixture of olive oil and butter. Salt and pepper
3 T chopped onions . Add to pan with browned chicken
1/3 cup Marsala - secco- superiore or ambra. NOT sweet Marsala . Add to pan and bubble briskly a few seconds. Add chopped procini
Cover and slow simmer till done. Add porcini water as needed to keep moist

[Jenise]

Sounds delish, Christina. Btw, I was thinking about the evolution of dried porcinis as I made yesterday's dinner. The first I ever bought were gnarly little black brownish-black wiggly strips, tremendously expensive on a per-ounce basis but a fraction of an ounce went a loooooong way due to very very concentrated, potent flavors. A teaspoon's worth would flavor a whole dish, pungently. I remember spending a fortune for a pound of them at an Italian deli in So Cal to move with me to Alaska, fearful (rightly so) that I wouldn't be able to get such things up north. They lasted a few years, and about the time I was running low we happened to travel to Italy where I replenished my supply.

Those are long since gone and I have not seen the porcini of old since. Instead, I have only found dried porcini as large pieces of a blond (domestic? Chinese?) mild porcini that are either a different breed of porcini or differently processed (with sulfur as a preservative) or both. In terms of equivalence of flavor, it's not even ten to one. Or twenty. You really can't get the same flavor at all from these blonde posers.

And so the dish I made yesterday, the rustic chicken with porcini mushrooms, was a pale and very unsatisfactory replica of it's former self as made with the Italian imports I used to have. (Haven't checked lately, but awhile back I checked Italian-luxury product-importer Urbani for The Real Deal, and all they had was the blonde stuff too.)

So, what are you using for porcini (fresh?), and have you or anybody else seen the kind of porcini I remember and am starving for?