A few days a go, I spotted a couple of mushrooms that looked like a brown wood mushroom on my way back home. I took one home to take a closer look and a spore print, and it was one.

So today I thought I'd go back to the same place and see if there are any more (because these things are tasteh!), but I didn't. What I found instead was about 30 shaggy parasols! Initially I thought they were normal parasols, but then they started bruising red so I thought that maybe they are Chlorophyllum molybdites (which is BAD). I was so close to throwing them away, but eventually I took a spore print and they turned out to be shaggy parasols. (They call them "shaggy" because if you walk near one, it starts shagging your show like a dog does.) (No, not really.)

I had a large variety of sizes and shapes to choose from, so I chose young, cup-shaped parasols so I can stuff them with things and cook them and eat them. Like you do when you find tasty-tasty mushrooms.

SO.

ingredients

4-5 medium-sized parasol mushrooms
1-2 tbsp butter
1-2 tbsp flour
100-200 ml milk (or cream)
2-3 cloves of garlic
½ onion
20-30 g blue cheese
20-30 g yellow cheese
20-30 g lilac cheese
salt and pepper (and other herbs, like dill or sage) to taste
and some more butter to baste.

1. Clean the parasols (but don't wash them because they'll use their taste - just use a wet cloth to scoop off all the dirt and stuff) (and don't be paranoid about it either - the dirt IS going to be cooked at 200˚C, so that's going to kill any germs), and place them in a baking tray/pan, facing upwards. If they don't stay, you can either chop the tops to make them flat, you can pinch them together with toothpicks, or you can make small nests with baking parchment for each one of them.

2. Melt the butter in a pan. Add the flour and mix until it's thick. Slowly add the milk, and then add the garlic and onions.

3. Cook for 4-5 minutes, and then add the spices. (Keep adding milk if it gets too dry.)

4. Fill the parasols with the mixture (butdon't fill them too much; the parasols will shrink as they cook, so the mixture will spill if you top them up), and bake in a pre-heated oven at 180˚C (360˚F) for about 30' (or until they looked cooked and juicy). Also, don't forget to baste with some butter two or three times during baking, so that you don't burn the mushrooms.



You can also stuff them with a lot of other things - a recipe I read mentions veal, others mention parmesan, and others mention sauces made of tomatoes and carrots. So you're obviously free to experiment! The mushroom itself tastes very strongly (and meaty), so it can easily be the main course.

NOTE: The parasol mushroom is known to cause some problems to some people. If you've never had it before, try a little bit first and then more.

So, my little wood blewits grew BIG! And what do you do when you know a place where about 23 blewits are growing? You take 'em 'n' cook'em!

I decided to try a new recipe. Richard Mabey (in his book "Food for Free") says you can cook blewits like tripe and has some rough guidelines how to cook them so, which I tried and which I am giving you here.

ingredients

some big wood blewits (or field blewits) (I used 5 for me)
milk, to cover (depends on your blewits and pan)
2 tbsp butter
½ medium-sized onion
dill (or sage)
some more butter
maybe 3 tbsp flour
salt and pepper to taste

and if you want to serve it with mashed potato,
2-3 potatoes
3-4 tbsp double cream (or milk)
some more butter
(oh, and a potato masher! I didn't have one and I used a fork, which DID. NOT. WORK.)

1. Separate the stems from the caps (use a knife if you think you're going to ruin the caps), and chop the stems finely along with the onion.

2. Put the caps in a pan and spread the stems and onion around them, as well as the butter (put bits of butter around). Cover with milk (a bit more is always better than a bit better), and simmer for about 30' (depending on how big your blewits are).

3. After simmering for 30', add some more butter and flour to thicken, and add season with salt and pepper (and some more dill/sage). You can also add chopped-up cheese at this point, which will melt and make it taste nicer. But don't use blue cheese because the taste of the cheese will be too strong for the taste of the blewits.

4. Simmer for 15', stirring occasionally to make sure it is thick enough, and when you're finished, pour on a plate, inside a ring of mashed potato. (To make the mashed potato: quarter the potatoes, boil for about 30', peel, mash with butter and cream, serve)

The book says you can serve with toast and apple sauce, but I didn't have either handy, so I'll have to try some other time.

I also used some maltagliati pasta (literally translates to "badly cut", and it is pasta randomly cut - you clearly can't buy those, but you can make them quite easily when you are making your own pasta: just slice pasta randomly!) and mixed them in with the coating to add some more stuff to eat.

This is a recipe for a traditional Italian dish from Lombardy, with a Finnish touch. I made pasta yesterday and after letting it dry overnight, I decided to try it out tonight. So, after a walk at the Hakaniemi market hall, traditional Aura Finnish blue cheese and freshly-picked funnel chanterelles were just shouting at me to get them, so I had to succumb to their cries and buy them and cook them.

Note: For the original Italian recipe, just use Gorgonzola cheese instead of Aura cheese, use porcini mushrooms instead of chanterelles, and use fussili -or even better farfalle- instead of tagliatelle.

ingredients

100g pasta (home made pasta always tastes better!)
100-150g trumpet chanterelles
100g Aura blue cheese
100ml double cream
2-3 garlic cloves
some parsley (to cook and to serve)
a bit of butter
salt and white pepper to taste

1. Start boiling the pasta (I usually have 1L of water for every 100g of pasta, and one teaspoon of salt for every 1L of water), and sauté the garlic in a frying pan. Cook the pasta al dente (soft outside, but firm to the bite) (but also cooked).

2. Throw the chopped mushrooms in the frying pan and cook in the butter for a while (until tender - chanterelles can be quite chewy if not cooked properly).

2b. If you have/want some white wine, you can pour some over the mushrooms now, and continue with the recipe once the wine has evaporated.

3. Pour the double cream in the frying pan and take off the hob. mix thoroughly, and add the parsley, white pepper and salt.

4. Once the mixture has cooled down a bit (i.e. is not boiling), add the chopped cheese (you should leave the cheese outside the fridge for a few hours prior to cooking to let it soften) and mix until the cheese melts. Do not let the mixture to boil once the cheese has been added. Return to the hob, if necessary, but remove again if the mixture is getting too hot.

5. Once the sauce is looking nice (cooking the chanterelles in the cream will soften them further) (which is good!), add the pasta in the frying pan (ah, you should have made sure to have a big frying pan from the beginning..), and mix thoroughly, coating the pasta with the sauce and the sauce with the pasta.

6. Serve! (You can also use fresh parsley leaves to decorate the plate once you've served it, and you can serve with parmesan cheese too) (and some nice white wine!)

7. Eat.

8. Clean up.

There. Not too difficult, is it?

You can have this as a main course with a starter with prosciutto ham and balsamic syrup, to have a wunderschön meal!

So, on the way back home, I decided to go through a small hill just to see if I will find any mushrooms there. It was the same area I had found my very first wild (edible) mushroom, a parasol, some three weeks ago.

As I was returning on my bicycle, I had to carry it on my shoulder to climb up, as there's no path that goes up that hill. That meant that less than five minutes later, I was looking for a place to leave my bike so I could search around on foot - and the moment I leave my bike, hurray, a parasol mushroom!

Unfortunately it was too old to eat, but right next to it was what looked like honey mushrooms (which turned out to be something completely different), and as I keep walking down I see the most delightful thing - two oyster mushrooms!

After taking the spore print (which looks just beauuuuutiful) to make sure they are indeed oyster mushrooms, I cooked them (OBVIOUSLY!) and ate them (even more obviously..).

I cut them in stripes and sautéed them, then poured some white wine, and after it evaporated I added some tomato and onion (two vegetables which just constantly hang around my cupboards), caramelised all of them together (mit honey), added some flour and seasonings, and then added a beaten egg.

You have two choices here: you can either eat them as-is, like an omelette, or..

you can mix them up, add some cheese to melt, and add on top of butter-fried slices of home-made bread!

Tastes absolutely deliciously, and they go very, very well with egg. They don't have a strong flavour, but they add a tasty touch when you mix them with other flavours.

MMMmmmmmmm!

These are some wood blewits (Lepista nuda) I picked today on my way back home. They look beautiful, and they have a very pleasant fragrance (when you slice them, they smell like frozen orange juice!).

It is VERY important that you cook these mushrooms. They can cause indigestion if eaten raw, but if you cook them they turn into mMMmm-ly delicious mushrooms.

I had them sautéed in butter with onions, tomatoes and some cheese, and some salad to accompany them. Of course, that's a terrible thing to do if you hate salad.

ingredients

some wood blewits
½ onion
1 tomato
1 tbsp butter (maybe a bit more)
1 tbsp honey (yes, honey)
1 tsp dried yarrow leaves (or dill, if not available) (or thyme...)
salt and pepper to taste

(oh, and cheese) (yeah, lots of cheese) (well, not really..) (just some)

1. Slice the mushrooms neatly (no maggots please!) and chop the onion and tomato.

2. Put the butter in the frying pan (hot fire) and when it melts put the mushrooms in the pan. Toss around often for the next 3-4 minutes (make sure they're well cooked - but don't overcook them because they will start losing their taste) (once they look a bit brown/darker, and they have shrunk quite a bit, they should be ready)

3. Sprinkle the yarrow over the mushrooms (in the pan) just a few seconds before you take them out. Put on a plate, and start frying the onion and tomato (you might need a bit more butter). You can toss the mushrooms in the pan again before you eat, if they're a bit cold.

4. Add salt and pepper to taste (to the stuff in the pan), as well as any other herbs you want (thyme, yarrow etc). A bit before you take them out, pour the honey on them and mix quickly (the honey will become very fluid very quickly).

5. Put them on the plate, and quickly put a couple of very thin slices of cheese on them, so it melts and looks NICE. And voilà!


You can also use sautéed mushrooms in omelettes, or with roast potatoes. Robert Mabey, in his "Food for Free" (2004) suggests that wood blewits in particular make really good stewing mushrooms, but I haven't tried it myself. But I have heard that if you use them in a sauce, for example, you have to make sure the other stuff are not too strong in taste, otherwise you will lose the taste of the mushrooms. And that's not very good with nice little wood blewits which you've picked yourself, is it?