And despite promising to take the camera out more, I still forgot to this morning, so I didn't catch the roost of jackdaws in the lime-green foliage and dark tracery of the plane tree above the car park, or the brown and yellow carpet of leaves tufted with sweet chestnut husks, or the dark micro-world, the small change of the wall pennywort, the seedling foxglove and moss velour cradling the perfect gold toadstool in the rotted hollow it the roots of the oak tree.
But I filled my pockets up with chestnuts, so I didn't come home empty-handed.
Free stuff. Chestnuts and yesterdays mushrooms, which though quite well out and open with velvety brown rather than pink gills, weren't insect-eaten at all, and made good rich duxelles, the best way to preserve wild mushrooms, I think. The pumpkin seeds I'll be happy to give to the birds, if they can eat them. We buy an awful lot of sunflower seeds through the winter, which these might supplement.
That'll have to do for tonight!
7 comments:
Oh! If I were closer, I'd bring over several bottles of ale and we'd speak of hope in the good ol' US of A. I'll be doing my part Tuesday morning heading off in the wee hours of the morning to vote. What is 4 years? A drop in the bucket of history. The sleeves aren't ready to be rolled down yet, and life is not a Hollywood movie. The free things in life, among them chestnuts and mushrooms, are to be cherished.
Prost sweet Lucy and Tom and Molly!
Thanks R. In fact that 'life is not a Hollywood movie' was rather one of the conclusions of the programme, which was informative and intelligent, not merely despondent. Good route for Tuesday!
I rather enjoyed the pumpkin seeds I salvaged and roasted. I think we only get horse chestnuts here, and I'm too untutored to try mushrooms.
I do wish I can sit down and follow Downtown Abbey but I never have the time. What do you do with those chestnuts?
Now off to look up duxelles. We only see horse chestnuts here too, but mushrooms are a way of life here as you probably know!
A mushroom duxelle. The first - admittedly minor - step towards Beef Wellingon. All you now need is forty quid's worth of fillet.
Z - I think most of your sweet chestnuts died in an epidemic. Barbara Kingsolver's (rather preachy) novel 'The Prodigal Summer' talks quite a lot about it, and attempts to breed resistant new strains. I only go for very obvious mushroom, pink/brown gilled field and horse mushrooms from patches I've been gathering for years, occasionally shaggy ink-caps and giant puffballs if I can find them, I never see a cep. There's a patch of some nearby which I'm 99% sure are a kind the foraging guide describes as 'choice', but I won't risk it. These pumpkin seeds are a bit on the small side, and very fiddly to shell.
Hliza - oh you should watch DA! You'd love it I'm sure; treat yourself to a boxed set and maybe watch it with Iqa when she's home. The chestnuts here are only half the number I found, I put the best ones in a dish and we eat them straight; I roast them on the fire but Tom just peels the shells off and munches them raw. These I peeled and blanched and froze, they go with all kinds of things, sweet and savoury, especially Christmas dinner!
Julia - duxelles are finely chopped mushies reduced with shallot, garlic and butter, you put a spoonful into soups and stews or onto meat, and as RR points out, spread between the pastry and meat for beef Wellington. I freeze individual small amounts in cake papers.
RR - I love beef W. but once got ill eating it (cooked rare) re-heated. You can always economise (a bit) by making individual ones with a small piece of fillet each wrapped separately... Do you use pate as well as the duxelles?
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