Sweden 7 - The Gold of the Forest

We found it! The Gold of the Forest.

We were in search of the Chanterelle mushroom - which is in season here in Sweden at the moment. And what a great day we had.

We set out in a local forest with a plastic bag and only our eyes to help us (and a compass to make sure we could find our way back).

I had been warned they were hard to spot, so I had my eyes peeled, all rugged up and ready to pick pick pick.

At first it was slow going...the Autumn leaves are magically falling, so the ground was covered in yellows and oranges, making it just that bit tricky to spot!

But a yell was heard, Tuna Man's Wife (TMW) found the first one. But it wasn't gold. It was a light brown with a beautiful yellow stem - so Tuna Man got out his trusty iPhone and checked it out on the net (ah technology)...and discovered it was the Autumn Chanterelle. Paydirt baby! The picking began.

As the three of us moved around the forest, all excited and anticipatory, looking for these sexy, earthy, sweet little suckers, TMW (again) let out a little scream...well ok, a big scream, she'd found one of the beautiful gold ones. Over we went, as fast as the soft mossy ground would allow, and watched her extract the little beauty, ah...a piece of art. So the searching really heated up as we looked high and low for these incredibly beautiful mushrooms.

These golden ones are so hard to spot, and are hidden in tricky places. We found two hidden under rocks! Tricky little so-and-sos!! You have to really get down, mess the ground around a bit, and keep eyes wide open for that wonderful woody gold. Um...I didn't actually find one myself, but I help harvest the patches that TM and TMW found - ever the willing helper!

So, there you have our score above. The brown ones are the Autumn Chanterelles and the golden ones are simply Chanterelles. We were out for 2 hours and that's our stash. We were feeling oh so proud, then TM gets a message from his aunty saying they had been in a different area and had picked 13kg of the things!!!! OMG!!!

Now it was time to eat. You have to clean the gorgeous little things first. So all three of us sat with little brushes, brushing away dirt, leaves, pine needles and spiders...you can see our proud stash of beautifully clean gold above.

Then it was cooking time. TMW was keeping it simple. Mushrooms on toast! Now, I won't bore you with all the superlatives...I suspect you're all a bit over my oooohing and aaaahing over food. Let me just say, I will never ever go back to our bloody boring ol' brown mushrooms back in Oz. I took my first bite of these wonderous things sauteed in butter, white pepper and salt, and honestly couldn't think about anything except how wonderful it was to be alive. Yep, it was an epiphany. I now love mushrooms, and there is a possibility I could become obsessed - I mean who knew they could taste this good??? Apart from the out of this world fresh porcinis I had in Italy, well mushrooms in my experience have been a big fat YAWN. No longer.

Now I have a mushroom dance!!! And I plan to do it regularly!!

PS. Last night after a hard day out sightseeing, I arrived home to the most amazing smells. It was a big pot of Chanterelle and Pork Casserole with Pressed Potatoes...um...there are no words, let's just say all I wanted to do was jump in the pot and bathe in it.