I’m guessing that it’s the intrinsic hunter-gatherer instinct in humans responsible for the inordinate amount of satisfaction in being able to gather & forage enough ingredients to make a two course dinner for five.

It would be safe to say that my other half is not hugely interested in food.  I think my spoken thoughts on what we might have for our next meal before we’ve finished the one we’re eating still thoroughly bemuses Ms R, but stick her in a forest with mushrooms and there’s no stopping her. Foraging for mushrooms is a kind of scary concept for city folk, what with the horrific deaths available from eating a seemingly innocent Myophore, so you definitely need someone who recognises at least one type of edible ‘shroom. We hadn’t even planned to do any foraging, but a new walk in the mountains in Southern Austria revealed a forest absolutely teeming with mushrooms and toadstools of all varieties. Whatever can be said about her other food preferences, Ms R can certainly recognise a Schwammele when she sees one. Now despite doing some non-extensive googling, I’m still not sure whether we picked Girolles or Chanterelles, but whatever they were, we must have got a couple of kilos of ‘em. I also managed to get lucky and picked what I thought were Penny Bun mushrooms ( I was trying to pretend I knew what I was talking about, based on vaguely remembered information from Ray Mear’s survival programmes) but turned out to be Porcini’s. 

The only thing about collecting a bunch of mushrooms from the forest is the fact you have to clean the buggers, and that is a singularly tortuous job, using kitchen roll and a small knife. The Austrian way to to deal with this is to sit on the porch with a bottle of schnapps and work your way through the cleaning as well as the bottle (although I wouldn’t recommend trying to cook after consuming the amount of schnapps required to clean a couple of kilos of mushrooms). 

I kept the dish for cooking the mushrooms fairly simple, cooking in butter & just adding some garlic & cream before adding to a bunch of cooked pasta (the picture of the meal really didn’t do it justice, which is why I haven’t included it). To finish, I made a fruity syllabub with grapes & apples from the garden, the leftovers of the cream used for the mushroom pasta and some berry liqueur I found in the larder. Sometimes the simple things in life are the best.