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| Wood blewitt. The cap is about 5cm across. |
Out walking today, I found a wood blewitt - a very distinctive lilac and brown mushroom. I picked it, and when I got home made sure that I'd identified it correctly. I sliced it thinly, fried it briefly in a very hot pan with a little butter, and ate it on dry toast. Delicious.
Lucky find!
ReplyDeleteIs the urban foraging movement big in the UK? I know it's become quite popular in the States this past year (at least, according to all of the blogs I've found on the subject). Canadians, if we do it, seem to be more secretive about the activity.
I don't think it is - I've found a few wild foods blogs, but I get the impression that, for example, blackberrying has declined over recent decades. There was a fairly successful book published in the 1970s called 'food for free' which identifies various edible wild plants, and gives recipes.
ReplyDeleteOccasionally farmers' markets sell things like samphire which aren't farmed and only grow wild - I tried some of this for the first time this year.
Collecting and eating wild fungi is much more popular on the continent - British people seem to believe that wild fungi are all poisonous. And indeed, there are risks because some edible species can be confused with dangerous fungi like death caps. With fungi, there aren't any rules of thumb which can be applied, and a 100% positive identification is needed. (In France, apparently, pharmacists are trained to identify mushrooms and you can take your wild picked mushrooms to them to find out if they're safe to eat.)
That's interesting - I had no idea French pharmacists were so trained as to identify mushrooms.
ReplyDeleteA friend of mine in California is very interested in urban food foraging, mushroom collecting and the like, even going to the length of organizing local food swaps (where people who forage or make things at home can get together and trade their produce). You might be interested in her website at www.chiffonade.org as she is also a talented photographer and food writer who might give you some ideas how to cook up your garden veggies!
Nice site, lots of foodie browsing there. Cheers.
ReplyDeleteI checked online about French pharmacists, and it's true (according to a website for British emigrants to France), but they still have around 30 deaths a year from people poisoning themselves with wild fungi, which seems very high.