The magic of mushrooms

Champignons.  There is a whole world out there of all things ‘shrooms, and let me tell you the French, and particularly the Societé Mycologique du Perigord are very well informed.  Can’t tell your Xerocomus Badius from your Amanita Phalloides?   Best that you can;  the former will go very nicely along with bit of smoked back on a Sunday morning, the latter will have you getting familiar with a slab of cold marble in the blink of an eye.

Anyone for a fry up?

Treat with extreme caution

I spotted the invite easily enough.  Posted outside Intermarché on their noticeboard.  “Organise une cherche du champignons, le mercredi 3 novembre à Vanxains.”  Le rendez-vous est fixé   à 9h30 Place de la Mairie.  Les participants pourront consommer leur picque-nique le midi à salle des fêtes où aura lieu l’identification des differentes espèces.  Venez nombreux”.  It was hard to imagine such a sign stuck up outside your local Tesco.

Tools of the trade

We left the Place de la Mairie at the designated hour;  well actually it was 10.15 but nobody seemed to bother.  We drove in convoy deeper and deeper into the adjoining forest.  Eventually we all stopped and parked up on the fringes of the wood.  We then readied ourselves pulling on walking boots and wellies before setting off laden with our empty paniers.  Now,  compared to grape picking this was easy.  All you needed was a thinnish stick and reasonable eyes.  Well the stick wasn’t a problem but hey ho “on attaque” it was.  We poked and prodded the wet leaves trying to look convincing but we were dealing with pros here.  Our paniers remained stubbornly empty but glancing around we noted that the other baskets seemed to be filling rather rapidly with all manner of wondrous things.  There were spidery ones with dangling bits, fat mother ones coloured red,   slimy brown ones and delicate feathery uncertain ones.  And did you know that mushrooms have eggs? Well, apparently they do as we were shown one but they are a rarity. To my mind they all had the potential to kill.  Sometimes a shout would go up.  We knew this meant something rare or exotic, but not for us;  we remained tight lipped but quietly confident.  By degrees our baskets began to fill and we felt like part of ‘shroom équipe’.   Soon my thoughts started turning to lunch and the fresh paté, ham and baguette tradition stashed in the boot of the car, oh and the bottle of St Emilion, pushed me on.

Beginners luck

At midi the pick came to halt and everybody returned to their cars and the convoy snaked its way through the wood once more finally ending up at the salle des fêtes.  Here we set up the table and chairs and it wasn’t long before the sound of cork leaving glass could be heard.  Now I found this rather refreshing because I have noticed of late that the drink of choice for most French people at lunchtime seems to veer between Château Contrex and Château Volvic, of course all served up from a nicely chemically impregnated plastic bottle.  Here I felt at home, amongst the Camembert, paté, red wine and 46 different types of dodgy looking fungi.  The subject of the French and the British getting into each others’ military blankets did not arise, and of course the talk turned to champignons but also the flavours of a Fronsac wine over a Bergerac.  The afternoon was spent carrying out an ident of the pick and all things considered Lesley and I had found one or two samples that had not been turned up by the professionals.  We said our bon continuations with our credibility still intact to cries of “See you next year!”

Big, bad and beautiful