I couldn't believe my eyes, when on one of my recent daily walks around the neighbourhood, I spotted four large beautiful mushrooms growing on a grassy patch of council owned land (which says to me people can collect said food at leisure).
I immediately picked one and using my limited knowledge of mushrooms declared them perfectly safe to pick and take home to eat. The hubby was not so sure, so I was reluctantly convinced to leave them there for someone else to take the risk.
The next day they were still there, including the one I picked."It was a sign", I said! So I ducked home, grabbed a large brown paper bag and gathered them up.
Much discussion was had around toxins ripping through my body if I consumed them. I even asked for a friends help, calling over to her house to ask "do you think these are poisonous"? After much debate, inspection and sniffing we agreed they looked very much like Portobello mushrooms.
I also checked on the Internet and became even more convinced my mushrooms were of the Portobello variety and therefore perfectly safe to eat.
How to cook them? Many of my favourite recipes came to mind, Coq au Vin, cream of mushroom soup and rice rissotto. In the end I chose wild mushrooms fried in butter, piled on toast. Delicious! I must admit they were a little stronger in flavour than the store bought ones. But they reminded me of the field mushrooms we collected as children on our many Easter camping holidays in the country. My mother used to fry them up on a camp fire. Foraged free food made her pretty happy too and like my story, we all survived to tell the tale!
I forgot to take a photo of them cooked ( I was too busy devouring them), suffice to say they were a lovely rich brownish/black colour.
1 comment:
I would love to be brave enough to of picked them. Bet they tasted divine.
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