Anodyne
Tuesday, October 30, 2007
 

To a forest in a Vancouver suburb. Goretex jacket, nylon rain pants, old beat-up sneakers and "Port Townsend Food Co-op" ball cap. Grey sky, intermittent light rain.

Down a bank through salmonberry and devil's club. Over fallen logs and around rotting stumps. Mist in the air, gentle patter of falling rain. Hebeloma crustuliniforme poking up everywhere through the floor duff.

Aminata fulvas upthrust in the hollows around conifer roots. Deeply striate margins, gleaming grey-brown caps, volvic sac remnants visible upon careful excavation.

Cantharellus cibarius, the fragrant and exceptionally tasty Pacific Golden Chanterelle, gleaming yolkishly yellow-orange like a blinking neon EAT ME sign visible twenty feet away through the bushes.

Boletus zelleri everywhere. I collected approximately fifteen pounds in four hours, including a foot and a half high specimen whose stem was as thick as an English cucumber. Back home, the 'shrooms went into a hot cast iron frying pan along with some scallions, butter, and a heathy dollop of '05 merlot. (Boletes are mostly water, so the mushrooms need to dry-sautee in nothing but their own juices and a sprinkling of kosher salt for five or six minutes before the other ingredients are added. Otherwise, the 'shrooms cook up slimy, like okra). In another pan, an organic steak acquainted itself with cracked black peppercorns.

'shrooms on steak, steak on plate. Simple! And after dinner and washing-up the Incredible Talking Cats helped string the remaining boletes from fishing line, to hang them up to dry.

(Image: Boletus zelleri, courtesy George Barron's Website on Fungi)
- posted by cjb @ 10:28 AM


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