David Pye bowl, more fungus, cake and thread ...

Sarah winding threads for kits

Field mushrooms and Parasols

Field mushrooms in David Pye bowl

Harvest

Autumn sunshine took Sarah and I outside to wind thread for the kits, drink tea and eat some delicious shop bought custard tarts, the best possible indulgence. As fast as she makes the thread bundles for the kits, they seem to disappear. The Christmas orders are coming in and we are going full pelt. Also a photo of some field mushrooms picked that morning locally, with one or two parasol mushroom thrown in too. They are rather artistically placed in a wonderful hand carved wooden bowl made by David Pye

which he gave to my parents back in RCA days. He was Prof of Furniture Design from 1964-1974 and I remember his collection of moths and butterflies in beautiful museum drawers when we went to visit him at his home in Wadhurst. Loved drawers ever since. The bowl reflects the radiating gills of the mushroom so beautifully ... here is another bowl very similar to it. I treasure this bowl, much loved, much used. The dressing when using it for a hearty salad runs obligingly down the ridges, easy to scoop again for another dousing ...

Chicken of the woods

It is that time of the year ... the hunt is on for Chicken of the woods. The most equisitely delicious fungus. Mind you I just love all wild mushrooms with a jealous passion. Jealous because I get very territorial when I find a patch that are not quite ready and furtively hide them under leaves for the next visit ... overly excited and heart racing when I discover a new delicious one somewhere unexpected, and I am ashamed to admit that I selfishly devour the lot THEN tell everyone of my conquest. I am not proud of these traits ...
But last week while out in the car I spotted a huge chicken of the woods growing just as it should on a deciduous stump, at the side of the little lane. It was in front of a cottage which was set back off the road. I got very excited and impatient to slice and fry! I decided to go back on my way home and pick it, though I had no knife with me. But on my return journey I spied the huge ditch in front of said stump, too much for me to scale, certainly, it would not be a dignified ascent, so hatched up another plan .... I returned with my 6' 4" son Will with legs as long and strong as you could shake a stick at. It was by then dead of night. We drew up in the car, the fungus glowing in the moonlight ... (actually it was pitch dark but it sounds better), but just as Will leapt from the car, a dog starts up barking like the Hound of the Baskervilles, and so we legged it like a couple of naughty school children. DAMN!
So for plan three .... before breakfast the next morning we were up, salivating voraciously fuelled by our hunger and drove off to the stump again. THIS time there was an old man in the garden of the cottage with his back to us cutting a hedge. But we were two hungry and desperate individuals by now and Will leapt the ditch sliced off the fungus and was back, breathless in the car in seconds, fungus OURS and I sped off with the beautiful aroma filling the car, so mouthwatering we could hardly wait. And in my eagerness I took no photos for you to see. There, told you I was selfish about fungus. I think only with my stomach at times like this. But I sliced it and fried in butter with salt and pepper then made a simple sauce with full milk and flour. I can't now speak of it as there is none left, and I am jealous of myself last week!
In looking up Chicken of the woods on google I found this lovely blog post from Hunger and Sauce and yes, the taste is essence of chicken, so incredibly savoury, and exactly as one remembers chicken as a child, when for me it was a treat on a Sunday, it is denser than chicken, packed with flavour, and quite, quite delicious and worth waiting whole years to find it's golden treasure ...


The hunt is on for another ....

Cooking and consuming Chicken of the woods ... in the wood

 Here is a photo of a previous years bounty, (those are not my hairy arms by the way)cooked in the woods on a little Primus stove.