Thursday 9 September 2010

Little Beauties

I appreciate there is some danger of this nonsense getting all foodie at the expense of being all boozie, but I must share this one with you.
Some recent rain followed by late summer heat gave hope to fungaioli hereabouts and so your correspondent ventured out into the Comboland woods with Lucky and Flossie to see what was going on.
And look at this beauty! Forget your Penny Buns, these are the real deal, coccone or Caesar's Mushroom in Blighty, where they aren't to be found as I understand it. Shame because they are exquisite eaten like this:
sliced raw, served on hand-ground raw beef and drizzled, darling, with your best olive oil and then lovingly scattered with parsley. To accompany this I knocked off a bottle of local Cortese, just slightly sparkling.
PS The big mistake here is to confuse them with these which look identical when growing, before the head pops out. Apparently they taste jolly good too, but then two weeks later you are dead.

6 comments:

Vinogirl said...

Wow, that looks like a homicidal boiled egg (I'm ripping P. G. Wodehouse off here...almost)

Wojtech Huunt said...

It's the alpha-aminitin.

Peter Ashley said...

Oh how yummy. Reminds me of Giant Puffballs, which I'm now keeping an eye (and tongue) out for.

Cletus "Big Dog" Kincaid said...

Here in Tennessee, we're mighty fond of the Horn of Plenty mushroom, and no Saturday morning brunch is complete unless there's plenty of Horn!

Wartime Housewife said...

There are few joys in the world to rival wild mushrooms but as you rightly point out, one has to be very careful. I once let a large patch of cepe go to waste because I just wasn't sure.

Morag said...

We get mushrooms growing in our garden in France. The boys are happy to let me collect, wash and cook them, and then they stand by watching me eat them, just to see whether this time they will inherit!

Silly boys don't realise that I do my research before picking anything, and also that pharmacies in France all offer a mushroom identification service - guess quite a few Frenchies must get it wrong each year!