Mushie Musings

Oh, hello, yes. I've been terribly naughty, lazy and busy and will not promise to make better. Can try though. Happy New Year anyways!

This time, I am gonna present something including mushrooms. I love walking in the woods and picking mushies. In Finland, we have what is called Every Man's Rights - you can pick berries, mushrooms and flowers everywhere - provided you're not doing that on someone's yard or otherwise restricted area. Obviously, you're not entitled to break, spoil or hurt anything. So, every autumn I spend 2 months my head buried into moss and gather mushies for the winter. I especially like winter chanterelles. The only thing I don't like that much in the process, is the mushroom cleaning. You have to wipe dirt, seeds and snails away before preparing them in any way. Cleaning is rather boring when you have a five litre pile of them stacked in front of you. I have considered getting a trained monkey to do that for me, so if you happen to have one kicking about, please feel free to send it this way. One more thing: DONT pick and eat any mushrooms that you cannot 100% identify as being suitable for food. Some mushrooms are very poisonous.

I usually dry winter chanterelles. That way they keep for a long time and are easy to use. Drying is a bit tricky if you dont have a specific gimmick designed for drying plants, berries and mushrooms. If you have a warm, dry place, the thinner mushrooms will dry on their own. The rest of us need to settle with an oven but it's a bit difficult to keep the temperature between 35 - 40 Celsius degrees. A mushroom piece is dry enough, when it snaps between your fingers when you crumble it.



Mushie soup

1 - 1,5 L cleaned and sliced fresh winter chanterelles (or chanterelles)
1 diced onion
150 gr bacon (I use the lower fat version, that goes by as fillet bacon)
250 gr unripened cheese
1-2 dL cream
1-2 tbsp dry sherry
Water
Black pepper
(Salt)
(Olive oil, stock cube)

1. Put the winter chanterelles on a frying pan on low heat. When the mushrooms start to "cry", you can slowly start adding heat. Stir occasionally. This takes a while, you can prepare the other ingredients while you wait that all of the liquid has seeped out from the mushies and vaporised. Take the mushrooms away from the pan. Mind you, the point is not to fry the mushrooms but boil them in the water that seeps out of them. Don't use too much heat!
2. Heat a frying pan. (Remove white fat from the bacon.) Fry the bacon on the pan, you should not need any extra fat for this. When the meat is brown, lower the temperature and saute onions with the meat. If the pan is too dry, you can add some olive oil.
3. Put meat, mushies and onion into a kettle and cover with water. Don't use too much water but just to cover everything nicely. Bring it to boil, and let simmer for 10 mins. Taste and add a pinch of stock cube if it requires more taste or salt.
4. Add unripened cheese and cream, bring to bubble. Check the taste if you want to add salt, pepper or any other spice you think might suite this dish. Add the sherry and serve!