Looking For Mushrooms, Fetching Trust
walking in the woods, foraging and three mushroom recipes
Last Sunday, I spent almost five hours in the woods. Like many people who live in a city like London, I often question the longevity of such a lifestyle as I play various soundtracks loudly through my headphones, an attempt to distract myself from how claustrophobic I’m feeling inside the Tube. Hours in the office stretch days long and I resent food shopping at check-out, often uninspired to cook and increasingly angry at the prices of goods. I wrote the last edition of The Onion Papers In Praise of Eating in Bed and this week is a celebration of the days when I exchange discount tags and bedsheets for the woodlands. Please do not read this newsletter as a guide to forage – I’m a novice and I can’t be trusted with your safety – but I hope you’ll accept my invitation to look around and to trust both nature and yourself.
I started foraging when I met my partner, Ludo. I grew-up in the North suburb of Paris, just outside Saint-Denis, where the asphalt composition of pavements absorb sunlight and buildings tickle the sky. Ludo, contrastingly, is one of the wild children of Tuscany, with a pocketful of myths and facts about the hills that map the province of Siena. Ludo initiated mentions of fennel, gobbi and sage in my recipe books; I’m excited about the beginning of the soup season thanks to minestrone and cavolo nero; Ludo snatches fruits and plants from trees and bushes when we walk together, limpets off rocks too. Me, on the other hand, I’m the urban product who complains about the volume of plastic I collect from one run of errands while being terrified at the idea of having to pick my food in the wild, the promise of poisoning my helpless self.
Back to last Sunday, or one lucky day for porcini.
We wake-up to brilliant weather and we jump on a train with an overnight home-baked tuna loaf, which is easy to slice and store in various pockets so we can snack throughout the day. We are following-up on a series of rainfalls. Porcini mushrooms are most likely to be found around oak trees and about eight days after a rain shower. As soon as we exit the station, my lungs open with an overload of oxygen and my back straightens as I begin to look around, training my ‘forager’s eyes’, in Ludo’s words.
What I love about walking in the woods is that the setting accommodates an inclusive pace. I can lean against trees or sit on a trunk, and the environment launches an exercise in listening and observing. It’s a place that invites sharing, whoever I’m walking with (even myself), muttering and wandering under a misleading sky made of branches. These kinds of days out encourage me to be curious. I love to find fluffy puff balls, I feel disoriented, the pattern of fallen leaves on the ground troubling my eyesight. I’m a captain who feels land-sick after a long trip at sea because I, too, haven’t seen as much land in a long time. London is built on cement and hard ground, the carpet of my flat and the short-cut green grass of the city’s parks. Green and wet, I crave mud and humidity. At times when chronic pains flare-up, I lose some of my mobility along my neck and spine, but there in the woods, I recover my conviction for what movement can bring, catching sight with change – look look look! I’m having to investigate and to observe, soaking the surroundings in, instead of walking fast with my head down at rush hour. The crocking noise of wooden bits and acorns as I set one foot before the other reminds me that I'm a visitor here – a red kite flies above me, a majestuous beast.
We spot a Blusher, caught inside a weak stream of sun, half buried. We don’t touch the poisonous species and this is why you should carry a pocket knife with you, so you can push the mushroom’s edges and dig into the ground around it safely and respectfully. Do not remove mushrooms from their habitat unnecessarily so nature can thrive. Lurid bolete, I read from our forager’s guide as we move on, identifying mushrooms, playful words that expend my dictionary and horizons. Looking at mushrooms’ gills always makes me want to pick-up my sewing machine again. I love to stay low on my knees and to inhale slowly, fragrance coming up from the ground, earthy, then seeing flies when I stand up again, heartedly. Some mushrooms are delicious, others are called Angel of death; this trip was successful for porcini and an enduring feast for the eyes because I’m a cautious forager. Still, I feel full as I look at this carpaccio di porcini.
Assemble mushrooms, rocket and parmesan on a plate. A drizzle of olive oil, the woodlands in a dish.
The Penny bun, also known as porcini, is delicious, fairly common and a safe bet for new foragers. A few tips on how to clean fresh porcini: cut the bottom of the stem and make sure that no leaves are attached underneath. Wet the tip of your fingers and roll them over the mushroom cap, then pat it gently with a kitchen towel. You don’t want to pass mushrooms under running water because their pores work-out like a sponge.
Maggots, like me, love Penny buns. Spotting a few of those around the mushroom is a good way to know that you do have porcini in your hands. I would leave behind a mushroom that is mouldy and full of maggots, but don’t fear the occasional tiny worm. They have fed on porcini their entire life, only to become an organic extension of the mushroom. Other things to look for when identifying porcini: smell! This one is like nothing else. Their stem is chunky and white, they grow on ground, not trees, and they have pores (no gills nor veins). Porcini are part of the bolete family and you shouldn’t eat a bolete that shows any shades of red on its stem or cap, or if it suddenly turns blue when halved. In any case, the first rule for foragers is to never eat the mushroom if you're in doubt.
I’m a fearful forager. I once stayed up all night waiting for a heart attack because I had convinced myself that I had mistaken wild garlic for the toxic Lily of the valley. A delicious pesto that wouldn’t have been worth it either. The appeal of being in nature aside, foraging with Ludo has taught me a fair amount about trust in a relationship. When we go out in the woods, our pace is scattered as we cover distances separately before reuniting around a specimen for investigation. We share thoughts, we check one of the apps we use on one of our phones and we flick through the pages of our foraging guide. If we find an edible mushroom, then we reach a decision about bringing it home with us or not: Is the mushroom too young to be picked? Is there enough of it to put a dish together? We don’t want to create waste out of nature itself.
Last Sunday, we returned home with three large porcini mushrooms. Trains are playful on Sundays in the UK so we decided to wait for the next day before cooking our Penny buns. Sometime mid-afternoon the next day, Ludo texted me:
‘How do you feel about a creamy porcini orzo for dinner?’
My response came in the form of two separate messages, sent at a short interval:
‘If you’re one hundred percent sure of yourself, then I’m fine with it.’
‘A little worried about dying murdered by mushrooms’
Our conversation continued before the kitchen counter, Googling and scrutinising each detail about the mushrooms, until I finally accepted to cook with them. I smile as I type this and realise how much blind trust I put in the industrial food chains to put safe food on the shelves of shops, to chefs I don’t know to cook me a meal, but I struggle to trust myself or Ludo to identify our own food. To eat the freshest of ingredients, to cook something from its origin.
Time had passed then, so we settled our stomachs with the cloudy comfort of a risotto dish. Ludo’s risotto with hand-picked porcini mushrooms, for 2 people:
1 garlic clove, thinly cut
A handful of parsley, thinly cut
1 chilli, thinly cut
A gulp of white wine
Porcini mushrooms from your last woodland walk, thinly sliced
150g risotto rice (I use Carnaroli)
Broth, made of one veggie stock, the parsley stems and a squeeze of tomato purée
Start with making the soffritto. In a casserole, fry garlic, parsley and chilli until fragrant. Add the mushrooms, risotto rice and swirl around for a minute or two. Pour in the wine and wait until the alcohol has evaporated. Start adding the broth, one ladle at the time, slowly and stirring continuously so the risotto doesn’t stick to the bottom of the casserole. Keep going until the risotto rice is cooked and the consistency is as creamy as you please.
Let your risotto settle for three minutes or so, heat off, then serve with a grind or two of black pepper.
Ludo doesn’t add parmesan or anything else to this risotto. The source of such a dish is the land, the porcini whose pores melt as the risotto cooks, the texture similar to butter. It’s rich and earthy. I love it.
Ludo and I polished our plates, proud of having produced our dinner from scratch. I was also relieved that we had survived, and just like that we were dancing in the living room. Ludo joked about the porcini having a rare case of hallucinogenic propriety and I disagreed: we were dancing to celebrate a new recipe for trust, one that broke our one-meal-onto-the-other life pattern. This one was the risotto that renewed my confidence in nature to grant me some independence, freewill when the pace of society makes me feel confined.
It would be a reductive statement to say that this newsletter is in praise of nature only. Spending time among wildlife, learning to forage responsibly and safely, is my wake-up call to slow down and listen to my senses – to look, smell, touch, taste, listen – to adapt when they fail me, also, and a reminder to stop and to assess my environment before moving on. One of the first things I learnt is that most fungi reproduce by releasing spores once they reach maturity, so it’s important to shake them around the area where you find them before taking them away. Otherwise, there won’t be any mushrooms when you come back.
Foraging has taught me about the importance of contextualising. I worry about what others think of me, where I want to live and the dissonance between the decisions I make and the person I aspire to be; I’m scared of the rise of fascist politics, inflation rates and climate change; thoughts paralyse me, until I find a perspective tool. Awareness is the first step and I have noticed that nothing else keeps me more alert than the woods. Prevention, I think, is what they call awareness in hospitals.
Also, mushrooms cooked in garlic and butter, bubbling at the bottom of a pan, or one of the rare dishes that make me miss France. I think of the escargots I used to juggle on plates when I was working in a bistrot during the school holidays – an odour that persists. There are days when one cannot find mushrooms, literally or metaphorically, so here comes a recipe for a chestnut and mushroom ragù that shines with supermarket bought ingredients. I cooked this recipe last Saturday, and I served it with fresh mafalde pasta.
For the mafalde pasta:
Semola fine
Lukewarm water
The ratio is 2:1, semola for water, to adapt depending on how much pasta you need
Knead the dough until it forms into a homogeneous ball and feels soft when rubbed against your cheek. Leave it to rest under an upside down bowl for at least 30 minutes.
Flatten the dough with the help of a rolling pin and start passing it through a pasta machine. Start from the widest setting and reduce until you reach the wanted thickness for your pasta. I stopped at 4 in this instance. Cut your pasta into long stripes.
Bring water to boil. Salt generously and cook the pasta for 2 to 3 minutes.
For the chestnut and mushroom ragù:
1 red onion, thinly chopped
A handful of parsley, sage and rosemary, all thinly chopped
A handful of chestnuts, shelled, peeled and thinly grated
1 carrot, thinly grated
A handful of cherry tomatoes, roughly chopped
800g tomato sauce
1 tbsp of dried porcini mushrooms, immersed into 1 teacup of boiled water
400g chestnut mushroom, thinly sliced
A gulp of white wine
Extra bay and sage leaves
In a heavy duty casserole, fry the battuto of onion, parsley, sage and rosemary on a low heat. Add the chestnuts and carrot, keep frying on a low heat, then add the cherry tomatoes, chestnut mushrooms and white wine. Stir, stir, stir until the alcohol has evaporated. Add the two cans of chopped tomatoes and dried porcini mushrooms mini broth. Thread the bay and sage leaves with string, immerse into the ragù, reduce the heat and leave the potion to simmer gently. Don’t cover the casserole as the water must evaporate for the ragù to thicken.
Serve on pasta. This ragù preserves well in the fridge too; savour cold, on toast, the next day.
Margaux