Some friends of the family came round, so I served up a shared lunch consisting of slices of sulfur polypore mushrooms, dipped in a batter of eggy bread, seasoned with a little sea salt, and a plate laden with spices, more sea salt to sprinkle on top of the fried wild fungi, some peppery boletus and fly agaric mushrooms, dried and powdered or flaked, with some lady grey black tea, made even more citrusy and fragrant by the addition of some chopped lemon balm, which I later sent off a potted up plant of with the family friends; and with the meal, a big pot of wild bullace plums, small and kind of gently tart and tangy, yet sweet and packed with flavour, freshly picked off the tree yesterday on my return walk home after hiking through from 8:30am to a bit before 6pm to pick wild mushrooms.
My old man doesn't like the sulfur shelf, but its one of my favourites, and it went down a treat with our visitors, between the three of us (my mom never would eat anything I've picked, and now she is just a demented, ruined carcass that has not yet realized it kept on breathing for too long and isn't even worth asking). But our. visitors and I just loved it, and munched away until the entire bowl I'd fried up was gone. I wish now I'd have done some more, but I had to use all the eggs ti prepare the batter mixture)
Tonight, had two big bowls of my shiitake and beef steak mince chilli w/ canned kidney beans and chickpeas, and a bowl of my freshly picked wild bullace plums, sprinkled with just a wee pinch or two of sugar, a tub of raspberries, to finish it all off, half a liter tub of triple chocolate chocolate ripple icecream with white, milk and dark chocolate curls and shavings on top; and a cup of lady grey tea, without milk of course, and delicately flavoured with a handful of lemon balm, just as I like it best. Earlier, the same balm flavoured and scented tea, but this time with earl grey.
Going to go out over the next day or two after the forecasted rains, to hunt down more mushrooms for this weeks suppers, maybe take my pistol and rifle with me and bag some squirrel and rabbits for a stew, with of course, lots and lots more mushrooms, at least there should be mushrooms galore with the gently warm yet rainy weather, warm and moist autumn season being perfect mushroom-gathering weather. There certainly was a good harvest the last time I went a couple of days ago. Time tomorrow methinks to go see if the growing young puffballs I had my eyes on has grown big enough to be worth picking and frying in crispy batter, shallow-fried in butter, sea-salted and served up with whatever else I happen to find.
I'm hoping for more Boletus appendiculatus, and B.edulis (the cep or penny bun, the bolete that is used nearly universally in mushroom soup. Strangely very very pricy in fancy restaurants, odd given how many hundreds of tons maybe in scale are cultivated for use in mushroom soup, even in the cheap canned kind, and in chicken&mushroom pot noodles even! one would think economy of scale would mean cheap ceps when fresh too, esp. considering that most mushrooms lose about 90% of their wet weight once dehydrated. Perhaps I need to start trying to grow my own ceps to try and flog to some of the finer eateries, at least, any I can manage not to just chow down myself, as mouthwateringly tasty as they are
)
Still got a massive plateful of sulfur polypore though, but I do really need more eggs for my eggy bread and sea salt batter recipe. Reminiscent a bit of kentucky fried chicken, esp. with a bit of pepper and sea salt, the result is what KFC would be if it went upmarket a lot, and did sulfur shelf and other fungi rather than actual chicken. The polypore is lovely stuff, soft, yet firm too, moist and full of flavor. Can be used similarly almost to tofu in the way Laetiporus can be used to soak up sauces and other flavours along with its own mild, yet yummy taste.
Can't wait to do some more once I have eggs and more brown bread for the breadcrumbs.
