Automatic Autumnal Analogies

Autumnal days are seriously up there with the main reasons to live in a place like Poland. Autumn is when the best of the berries are available, when the leaves start to change colour and when the magical, and previously unknown to me, world of mushrooms. I was banging on last year about Kurki and Rydz, or Chanterelle and Red Pine. Well, this year we also got very lucky, it was Mushroom-arama! There were mushrooms growing everywhere, some would even suggest from between Marty's toes, and they would be right, too! First things first we toured the house block, as the land has many birch, conifer and oak trees. All favourite habitats of mushrooms.

We found an old Boletus at the front of the house in Sokolka

A Bay Bolete forest dwelling shroom.

The underside is all spongey and gores blue when you cut them.

This one was a touch too dry to eat.

Like this one also being too dry to eat. But it does show you the spongey internal structure well.

So I had been bugging Marty for ages to take me mushrooming, but she is always scared because she isn't totally confident with identification. So we pulled in the big gun, Marta's Uncle Tomek. He is THE man when it comes to finding anything. Whether it be a new car part, a custom made staircase or mushrooms in a tick and mosquito infested swamp. He knows it all. People like Tomek are the reason that I wish I knew more Polish as I can tell that he has a million stories. So Tomek piled us into his van that is normally only for Al Pacino and Iskra, his French Bulldogs. We went off hurtling down the road, turning off onto a dirt road in the middle of the forest, still hurtling, narrowly avoiding trees, logs, rocks, huge swamp like puddles and then slamming on the brakes. Tomek says get out. So we do. There are mushrooms sitting in the middle of the road! How he saw them when going at about 50km/h, I will never know. They were Opienki or Butter Mushrooms.

The first bunch we stopped at. I thought it was huge.
Some looked small but they are the best of all.
Tiny equals tasty told Tomek to Tush and the tourist.
You just take the tops as the rest can give you an upset stomach apparently.
These are a little old and dry, but just look at those layers.
Then more old and dry ones I thought were a lot.
Then you find a tree like this! This is up to about 2m off the ground.
So after little over an hour we had a good haul for us and the family.
We found loads and really quickly, but that was mostly thanks to Tomek. He was joking that he saw more people in the forest than in the church on Sunday. Of course hunting mushrooms isn't as easy as you think, not because you will never find any mushrooms, but because there are many poisonous ones.

What pretty red and white! It doesn't mean something nice like the red cross or the Polish national team, but certain body cramps and death.
These ones may look like somewhere the smurfs would live, but are basically death in a fungus, a Panther Cap.
I had no idea what this was, but it had to be poisonous. Well it isn't, it is a Parasol mushroom and because I am no mushroom guru I left it. But it is actually a very highly sought after mushroom.
This one is called the Sulphur Tufts.
These actually look really similar to old butter mushrooms.

I don't know what these are, but they look scary, and the yellow thing could be a muppet! Either way if you want to know more about Mushrooms, Shrooms, or Mushies as people might call them click here. A great resource and maybe you can even find a completely new species!

Something's cooking!!

So I have been lately cooking up a storm in the kitchen. On the weekend, we had some of Marty's relatives over for dinner, we cooked Asian pastries, Indian Beef, Spinach and Chickpea curry with homemade Naan bread and dessert was the ever staple in this house of Apple Crumble. It all appeared to go down a treat. We also were able to drink a St Halletts Shiraz from the Barossa, thanks to the lovely importers of Marks and Spencer. Sometimes I do like this globalisation!

So I thought, as I am always talking about food I cook to my students, friends, family, complete strangers and even at times inanimate objects, I should through a few recent photos up. Many are inspired by Poland, sometimes the weather, sometimes the food available and other times by absolutely nothing at all.

So we can start with the influence of the markets at Hale Mirowski where we saw the lovely little chicken mushrooms.
Fry them with some lovely butter,
Add some cream.
And combine them with Asian marinated free range duck, and some breadcrumbed garlic yellow beans! Yumo!
Another day, when I was home due to some cancelled classes, I decided to buy some roasting beef and cook it very slowly, so that at the end of it all, I could shred it and serve it on a bed of mashed potato.
Another time, I wanted to make a pie. So I used some decent beef with some lovely porter, look at it froth away! It made a lovely steak and stout potato pie at the end of the day.
Now to some Rydze mushrooms, as you saw in the market photos earlier, these are very pretty mushrooms. So I took them and added herbs, cream and a healthy dose of black pepper to make a lovely rich sauce.Then I took turkey mince, added more herbs and spices, breadcrumbs, eggs, capsicum, and some blue cheese as a filling. Whipped up some barley...
And hey, presto meal made in all of about 25 minutes!
Problem being with my limited Polish, I didn't know the number for anything smaller than half a kilo of mushrooms. Therefore I needed another evening of planning to come up with a simple mushroom, ham and potato stew. Really great for cold Winter days. Match that with some fresh dark brown bread and you are on a warming Winter streak!
So cooking is super duper easy! I will be adding more food things now as I know you all love them.