Herbs and wild plants gathered from field and wood have always been a valuable source of both food and medicine to the peasant community. To this day, the herb seller occupies a special corner in all Mediterranean and Eastern European market places and is always a source of advice on his wares.
My favourite herb market is held every week in Buis-les-Baronnies in the mountains of Upper Provence. Many of the medicinal and flavouring plants can be gathered from the rocky slopes which surround the little town which has expanded what was once a natural resource into an industry. Fields are planted up with rosemary, lavendar and thyme, and a packaging plant supplies most of France with its herbs and imported spices. Local herbs are sold under the medieval arches of the market square, where wooden trestles are loaded with sacks of dried aromatic leaves opened for inspection, among them five varieties of thyme, rosemary, bay, sage, and juniper berries, all of which are still gathered wild in the garrigue. Also available are the various infusion herbs, digestive and soothing: lime leaves, vervane, mint, lemon balm, feverfew, rose petals, marigolds, three varieties of camomile, cherry stalks, and a hundred different roots and herbs, each with a special medicinal property. The sellers will tell you the people demand–as they have always done–great variety. This one for sleep, this for sloth, this for a bad stomach, this for women’s ills. Then there are the imported cloves and peppercorns, cinnamon and bundles of liquorice root for the children to chew, and bundles of lavendar, grown in rows as a crop for the perfume industry.
HERBS FOR FLAVOURING
These are grouped here in their botanical families, which I hope will encourage the cook to look for a substitute within the family if a given herb in a recipe is unavailable. There are four main groups in the European wild larder: the Mint family, the Carrot family, the Onion family, and the Cabbage family.
THE MINT OR LABIATAE FAMILY
All the herbs in this family except sweet basil, which is a native of tropical Africa and Asia, are indigenous to the Mediterranean. Their use was spread throughout Europe by the Romans during their colonialist period. If you cannot obtain a specified herb, reach for another in the same group. The results are generally perfectly satisfactory and would be as expected in the peasant kitchen, where the cook would use whichever herb came easily to hand.
Basil (Ocimum basilicum) A native of India and tropical Africa but imported into the Mediterranean many centuries ago, basil was used as a charm against the Basilisk or dragon in ancient Italy, while to the early Greeks it was a royal (basilikon) herb. A favourite flavouring in Greece, Italy and France, it is the dominant herb in the making of Chartreuse. Nip the top leaves of a growing plant to encourage branching. Dry and store after flowering. Or keep the leaves steeped in vinegar for use in salad dressings. Or store in the form of pesto.
Sweet Marjoram (Origanum majorana) A native of the Mediterranean and used interchangeably with oregano and to replace basil in the winter, it is rather more subtle in flavour than either of these herbs. In medieval times it was gathered as a strewing herb for the floor. Pick for drying just when it comes into flower–its flavour is strongest when dried.
Wild Marjoram or Oregano (Origanum vulgare) Another native of the Mediterranean, oregano was named ‘mountain joy’ by the Greeks. It is very often used with tomatoes in Italy, particularly in pizzas. Bees love its little white flowers. Dry sprigs of it when in flower. There is a Mexican oregano much used in the United States, which has a similar, somewhat stronger flavour, but is a member of the Verbena family.
Spearmint (Menta spicata) Growing wild throughout central and southern Europe, spearmint is the best mint for drying and has been in use for thousands of years. Peppermint (Menthol piperata officinalis) is a stronger variety and used for oil. To dry mint for storing, tie in bunches and hang in a current of air. Then strip and crumble the leaves to keep, like all stored herbs, in an airtight jar out of the light. In pre-refrigeration days mint was believed to prevent milk from turning sour in warm weather. An excellent herb for the digestion, the French use the dried leaves to make an infusion. In England fresh mint is used to sauce lamb and flavour peas. In Eastern Europe and throughout the lands once occupied by the Ottomans, it is used fresh as an infusion, heavily sweetened, to make a refreshing tea.
Rosemary (Rosmarinus officinalis) As one of its Italian names, rugiado di mare, dew of the sea, suggests, rosemary does indeed grow best near the seashore. In warm climates its delicate blue flowers blossom all year round and are much loved by honey bees. As a burning-herb, traditionally considered protection against witchcraft and, in France particularly, to possess aphrodisiac qualities. It can be picked for drying at any time, although most fragrant and oily in August and September.
Sage (Salvia officinalis) A herb whose primary use is medicinal, sage was planted throughout Europe by the Romans, easily incorporated in the peasant diet for its health-giving properties–stomach settling and a cure-all for women’s ills. The best time to gather it for drying is in the spring, before the plant flowers and its stalks begin to lengthen.
Summer and Winter Savory (Satureia hortensis and S. montana–also known in Provence as poivre d’ane) Two very similar species of which the summer variety is a more gently flavoured annual, and the winter a woody perennial. The flavour is somewhere between thyme and rosemary. Savory was so popular in medieval England that it was one of the herbs taken by the settlers to be seeded in the New World, where it settled down enthusiastically. Medicinally, used as an anti-hystamine to relieve the pain of insect stings. Savory dries well, is an excellent flavouring for meat and fish dishes, particularly trout, and in England was considered to have the same affinity with beans as mint with peas.
Thyme (Thymus vulgaris) A burning-herb, antiseptic and fumigant, which gets its name from the Greek word for ‘burnt offering’. Thyme oil, a monastery distillation (the main flavouring herb in Benedictine) has long been used medicinally as an antiseptic, particularly efficacious against fungoid or bacterial infections. Bees love it and collect its perfumed nectar to make a fragrant, delicate honey. The flavour is at its strongest when dried.
THE CARROT OR UMBELLIFERAE FAMILY
The parts of the plant most usually employed for flavouring are the complete fruits rather than the seeds. All the varieties used in Europe are, as with the mint family, native to the Mediterranean, and all taste of aniseed in varying degrees.
Aniseed (Pimpinella anisum) A white-flowered Eastern Mediterranean annual, aniseed was used as a liquorice-like flavouring by the Greeks as well as in Jewish cooking. The Romans valued it for its digestive properties and baked it in cakes to be eaten at the conclusion of one of the gargantuan banquets which were a feature of life at Caesar’s court. Still valued today as a stomach-soothing infusion and digestif, and as the medicinal and flavouring ingredient in digestive white brandies–Spain’s Anis Seco and Dulce, France’s dry Pernod and sweet anisette, and Greek ouzo. The active ingredient, anethole, is also found in Chinese star-anise, the dried seedpod of a member of the magnolia family. Aniseeds can be bought from any Mediterranean spice stall and are generally used in western and northern Europe to flavour sweet biscuits. In Greece and Turkey, the seeds are used to spice stuffed vine leaves and vegetable dishes, particularly anything which includes carrot, a close relative.
Caraway (Carum carvi) A biennial Mediterranean native, the plant’s roots are sometimes eaten as a vegetable, although the most common use is in seed form for flavouring. A medicinal as well as a culinary spice, traces of it have been found in 10,000 year-old lakeside dwellings in Switzerland. Much liked in central Europe as a universal flavouring, it is used for meat, fish, cheese, pickles, bread (particular rye bread), and also for liquors like the German kummel. Caraway has a reputation as a digestif and has given its name to seed cake.
Chervil (Anthriscus cerefolium) A soft-leaf herb with a carroty aniseedy flavour, a native of Eastern Europe which needs winter sun to flourish, chervil was much liked by the Romans and continues to be used in France and Germany as a flavouring for soups, stews, and eggs–often in conjunction with other soft-leaved herbs such as parsley and tarragon–and is an honourable member of the salad-green family.
Coriander (Coriandrum sativum) A native of southern Europe, coriander is used either as dried seeds, or as a soft-leaved herb, a form in which, until you smell it, it can be confused with parsley. In seed form, it has been used throughout the region since at least 5,000 BC, appearing in Egyptian and Sanskrit records. In leaf form, it is used in Portugal and Cyprus, a result of a complicated succession of influences. Portuguese sailors acquired the taste for the fresh leaves from their trade with the Far East (where it was an early transplant popular throughout India and the Orient), while its use in Cyprus can be ascribed to the trade with North Africa, where it’s used as a flavouring herb in the preparation of kebabs. As a result of the Moorish presence in Andalusia, it’s also sometimes used to flavour pinchitos, little kebabs, a popular street food at feria time. In my local market town, Tarifa, the pinchito man always wore a red fez with a tassel in case anyone should be in any doubt of his Moorishness. Also known as Chinese parsley, to further confuse its origins, it was successfully transplanted to the New World, where the fresh leaves and the seeds alike are now a dominant flavouring in many Mexican and South American dishes.
Cumin (Cuminum cyminum) An annual native to Egypt, only the seeds are used, very often in ground or powdered form, when they have a distinctive warm rather honeyed scent which reminds travellers instantly of the souk. A spice of ancient pedigree, mentioned in both the Old and New Testaments and still much used wherever Middle Eastern cooks had influence, including Moorish Spain and the lands of Eastern Europe which were once under the Ottoman Turks. In medieval Britain, it was an important item in the spice chest.
Dill (Anethum graveolens) A feathery annual with a flavour much like caraway, dill’s popular name derives from the Norse word dilla, to soothe. Dill was originally a native of southern Europe, and was transplanted over the centuries to northern climes where it has long been a great favourite, and in particular a staple of the German and Scandinavian kitchens. Fruit seeds and leaves are both used, particularly in the flavouring of pickles and gravlax, where it took the place of pine needles used when burying the fish on the seashore during the autumn for retrieval after the spring thaw. The seeds are widely employed in dried form to flavour cabbage, pork, and potato dishes.
Sweet fennel and Florentine fennel (Foeniculum vulgare and F. vulgare dulce) Sweet fennel is a tall feathery perennial native to southern Europe and found growing along every Mediterranean road verge. Florentine fennel is an annual grown for its juicy edible celery-like bulb which is eaten raw in salads or cooked as for celery. Both types of fennel can be used as herbs, fresh or in the form of the dried fruit. The dried stems of the wild variety are gathered in France as an aromatic fuel over which to grill fish. In Spain, it’s the essential flavouring for pickled green olives and the broth for cooking snails.
Curly and flat-leaf parsley (Petroselinum crispum and Crispum filicinum) A biennial of Mediterranean origin–Sardinia is favoured–numerous varieties are now cultivated throughout the region. Grown as a medicinal plant by the Greeks–whose name for it is ‘rock celery’–it is the most widely available herb in today’s kitchen and much liked as decoration as well as flavouring. The Greeks used it to crown their heroes, and it was, like so much else, introduced to northern Europe by the Romans at a time when it enjoyed a considerable reputation as a medicinal plant and was used to treat kidney and liver complaints. Rich in vitamins, particularly vitamin C, a spoonful taken once a day will make up for any deficiency in fresh vegetables. Use fresh as a flavouring herb–it tastes of nothing much when dried. If you grow your own, take care to pinch out the flowering stems if you want it to continue in leaf.
THE ONION OR LILIACEAE FAMILY
The family includes the genus ‘allium’, all of whose members (around 90 species in Europe alone) share the pungent odour which defines the genus. Many of the wild varieties were used by the country people both as a vegetable and as a herb. The more meaty cultivated varieties, gently fried to caramelise the sugars or simply chopped and added as they are, are the most important flavouring ingredient of the European kitchen.
Onion (Allium cepa) The onion family has been in cultivation since pre-historic man first thrust a roasting stick in the campfire. The family is unusually high in a certain type of sugar which, when subjected to high heat, caramelises successfully, becoming, on the chemists’ scale of measurement, at least 50 times sweeter than granulated sugar. This property, while useful in giving colour as well as flavouring to stews and sauces, has gone a long way towards developing the taste for sweetness in meat which makes fast-food hamburgers so seductive. Yellow onions are, in general, sweeter than white–and the big purple-tinged salad onions of the Mediterranean are the sweetest of all.
Leek (Allium porrum) A particularly hardy member of the family, leeks are usually employed as a vegetable. They can also substitute quite satisfactorily in any recipe which calls for either raw or cooked onion. The tender parts of the green tops finely sliced can replace chives as a garnish.
Chives (Allium schoenoprasum) A miniaturised onion which forms a compound bulb, each of which has within it a bud. It is the green shoots from these buds which are used as flavouring and decoration.
Garlic (Allium sativum) A flavouring tuber known in its modern form to the Ancient Greeks and much loved by the Romans. When harvested in the spring, the plant looks like a juicy white onion. Close inspection of the base of the layers reveals what look like tiny seeds but are in fact the infant cloves. It is not until the tuber has been allowed to dry out (either in the cupboard or in the ground) that the seeds fatten and swell by absorbing the moisture from the onion-like layers which enclose them. When the process is complete, which will take 2-3 weeks, the seed will have grown into a juicy fat clove, and the moisture-filled layers reduced to a fine white protective papery covering. Used in Mediterranean countries as a vegetable–slow cooked on a gentle heat it loses its ferocity–and as a flavouring throughout the territory.
THE CABBAGE OR CRUCIFERAE FAMILY
All the brassicas–including all varieties of cabbage, cauliflower, turnip, rutabaga, broccoli, radish as well as garden flowers such as candytuft, alyssum and wallflower–belong to this family, which has the distinction of including no members poisonous to humans.
Mustard (Brassica alba) A native of Eurasia, widespread and promiscuous, as the botanists say of a plant which will grow anywhere at any time. The flavour develops only when the seed is crushed and dampened. It has its name from the Romans (who else), who mixed it to a paste with mustum, unfermented grape juice. Its use as a medicinal plant, providing the active ingredient in poultices, plasters and baths designed to decrease swelling–was based on its ability to irritate the skin, drawing blood to the surface. A mustard foot bath is still one of the best ways of soothing aching feet.
Horseradish (Amoricia rusticana) An introduction to the region from Asia, horseradish now flourishes in the wild, particularly wasteland. An appetite enhancer, it’s mainly used as a condiment. Its use is largely confined to the Germanic culinary tradition–Austria, Germany, Scandinavia and Britain. At its best used when fresh and young, grated on the diagonal to produce long thin strips, in combination with grated apple. When mature and a little on the woody side, best finely grated and stirred into whipped cream. The active ingredient is a volatile oil which is enough of an irritant to be poisonous to livestock.
MISCELLANEOUS HERBS AND SPICES
Bay or laurel (Laurus nobilis) An evergreen tree native to Asia Minor but now widely cultivated and naturalised throughout Europe, the leaves are used as a flavouring throughout but are particularly loved by the cooks of the Mediterranean. Both fresh and dried are used, but there’s a feeling among the country people that the fresh leaves can be toxic. Wreaths of bay laurel were awarded as trophies in classical times–hence the modern use of the word laureate.
Cardamom (Elettaria cardamomum) A native of India, cardamom seeds are particularly popular in Scandinavia where they are used in sweet rather than savoury recipes. Best bought in the pod–check the colour, the paler the better–then de-pod and crush before using (Indian cooks roast the seeds to release and intensify the flavour).
Capers (Capparis spinosa) The flower buds of a spiny scrambling vine, a Mediterranean native which pops up in every crack and cranny of every hillside throughout the region. When gathering your own, choose the smallest undeveloped buds, blanch them briefly in boiling water and pack them under salt. You can pickle them in vinegar later–or not, as you please. Very delicious when fresh, dusted through egg and oil and deep fried till crisp. In Britain, nasturtium buds are sometimes substituted.
Poppy (Papaver somniferum) The opium poppy was originally a native of Asia, but is so ancient and accustomed an immigrant in Europe that it grows wild everywhere. Its seeds are used in cakes and pastries and sprinkled whole on breads and rolls, particularly in Eastern Europe, where tall mounds of the slate-blue seeds are to be seen on sale in all the autumn markets. The seeds are rich in minerals and, pounded with sugar, make a festive filling for strudels, sweet breads and dumplings. The seeds, which lack the soporific element found in the sap, are also ground down into flour and used, mixed with eggs, to make a nourishing wheat-free and fat-free cake. These days Holland, market gardener to all Europe, is the major producer and exporter.
Chilli Peppers (Capsicum annuum and C. frutescens) Both species are New World natives, and it is from these two fiery varieties that all edible capsicums–bell, paprika, all chillies both hot and mild–are descended. C. frutescens is an Andean native and is smaller, more pointed and hotter than the lantern-shaped C. annuum. The Hungarians developed the mild, fleshy capsicum or bell pepper and used it, when mature and ripe, for drying and milling into paprika, as did Spain, who developed pimenton, a spice used for both colouring and flavouring (particularly chorizos and other preserved pork products). Both can be mild or hot (there’s a delicious smoked version from Extremadura). The heat is to be found in the woolly fibres which attach the seeds to the flesh rather than the seeds themselves. As a salad or frying vegetable, they can be eaten green and unripe or ripe and red–the stage at which they are dried for storage, milled or not as suits the native habit.
In Hungary, paprika milled from hot chillies rapidly became the most important of the rural household’s winter stores, providing vitamin C as well as adding colour and piquancy to what would otherwise have been an unbearably monotonous diet. Paprika peppers for home consumption are traditionally threaded and dried in the autumn sunshine, hanging like scarlet garlands under the eaves of the farmhouses rattling in the breeze till they’re ready to be finished off in outdoor ovens. After dehydration, traditionally they were crushed to a fine powder with bare feet over a huge sieve or stone mortar, much as grapes are trodden in a wine press. Towards the end of the 19th century, professional millers in the Szeged area of south-eastern Hungary took over the industry, and a milling device was invented which could leave out, or control the inclusion of, the hot element, capsaicin, and produce the much prized Noble Sweet Rose–a mild paprika, delicate and rich without a hint of fieriness. Thirty years later, a new strain of C. annuum was produced which is not naturally fiery, and can be ground up, seeds, filaments, flesh, and all.
Today, six categories of varying fierceness are available from the paprika merchants of Budapest, all ground from the same hybrid, C annuum var. lingum Szegedense. These, starting with the mildest, are Kulonleges (very mild); Edesnemes (mild); Feledes, half mild; Rozsa or rose paprika (mild and sweet); and Eros (as fiery as anyone might wish).
In their original fiery form, the capsicums were planted wherever the climate allowed, but with most enthusiasm in the gardens of the peasantry who cultivated them tenderly and used them as a pepper substitute, doubly valuable because they were free, according them the same reverence in the European kitchen as is given in their homeland, the Americas. They soon earned a reputation as a near-magical cure-all–and not without reason, since paprika and chilli peppers deliver up to six times as much vitamin C per drop of juice as an orange; and, by weight, between nine times the amount found in tomatoes; they are also plentifully endowed with vitamin A–the source of carotene, the stuff which makes flamingo feathers pink, turns carrots orange and makes shrimps blush scarlet. It was soon decided that as a cure-all against the cold winds of Anatolia, there was nothing to touch a shot of brandy with a pinch of hot paprika. In addition, its antibacterial properties allowed it, when sprinkled on wounds, to assist in the healing process.
The active ingredient–the heat–comes from capsaicin, an alkaloid found mainly in the white tissues to which the seeds are attached, a substance which encourages the secretion of gastric juices. The fieriness delivers mixed messages to the brain–both fear and pleasure, accounting for its addictive effect. Reactions such as a runny nose, watery eyes, and painful sensations in the mouth would normally tell you the stuff is dangerous–spit it out. But the intellect tells you it tastes good–sweet and thrillingly peppery. The brain responds, it seems, by manufacturing endorphins, its own natural (and naturally addictive) opiates. Chilli lovers, say the chemists, share that lust for excitement which bonds racing drivers and mountaineers and all those who follow dangerous sports. And if any further proof is needed, consider that, in spite of its late arrival in the Old World, chilli peppers are now consumed by more people and in larger quantities than any other spice in history, a process which has taken place over only four centuries.
Pepper (Piper nigrum) The peppercorn is the processed fruit of a tropical vine which, although native to India and endemic to the tropics, has been imported in dried form and prized throughout the region since classical times. Black peppercorns are produced by picking the fruit green and unripe, and allowing it to ferment and dry in the sun. White peppercorns are the result of allowing the fruit to ripen to scarlet, soaking, skinning and spreading the seeds in the sun to dry. The treatment not only concentrates the flavour but allows the spice to be stored virtually for ever–virtues which account for its enduring popularity: it still represents one quarter of the world’s spice trade.
Saffron (Crocus sativus) The stamens of a crocus native to Asia Minor, saffron has been used certainly since Old Testament days as a dye, food colorant, and medicine. Since 13,000 stigmas go to make each ounce of saffron, and each crocus can only produce 3 stigmas, it’s very expensive indeed. Various alternatives are sold in Mediterranean market places, some chemical, some natural–among the latter turmeric, labelled ‘Indian saffron’, which though it delivers a similar although more violent colour, has quite a different flavour; and as I saw it recently in Istanbul’s spice market, marigold petals under the name of ‘Mexican saffron’. Saffron was a very popular spice in the medieval English kitchen, particularly at court where there was passion for highly coloured foods. In the fields of East Anglia, particularly around Saffron Walden, Crocus sativus flourished until we lost our taste for culinary merriment on instruction from Lord Protector Cromwell–a Puritan who distrusted anything which smacked of Rome–surviving as an everyday spice only in Cornwall, where saffron breads remain popular to this day. In France it is used to colour and spice the bouillabaisse, in Spain it’s essential in the paella.
WILD AND CULTIVATED FUNGI
Fungi are one of the most treasured and freely available wild crop of all–and cultivated varieties remain very close to the original. Curiously, though, different nations collect different edible fungi, and often have strong prejudices against varieties which others collect with enthusiasm. Nevertheless, all the recipes can be prepared with ordinary cultivated mushrooms–button are suitable for some, big flat ones for others. Use your discretion.
The British are somewhat suspicious of all but the common field mushroom, the variety which gave rise to the cave-grown cultivated mushroom or champignon de Paris. The French, on the other hand, consume a wide variety of theirs, as do the Italians and the Swiss. Yet the real European experts are to be found in the markets of Eastern Europe. A shopping trip for edible fungi on sale by licensed vendors in the markets of Romania and Hungary during the autumn of 1985 yielded the following varieties. All those I have listed are native throughout Europe, including the British Isles.
Take great care when collecting your own. As a general rule gather only the ones which are familiar to you. Use a good field guide to make a preliminary identification of new species, but always double check by taking expert advice before you add them to your basket. The variations caused by sun, rain, temperature, and age can be so wide that the best colour photograph–let alone the usually more accurate painting–is often misleading. The penalties for mistakes can be very heavy. Markets in mushroom-gathering areas, like Budapest’s superb food market, normally have an expert on hand to check those which are offered for sale, and to give advice to the buyer. In France pharmacies are a common source of guidance during the mushroom-harvesting season.
Horse mushroom (Agaricus arvensis*) Looks much like the cultivated mushroom, though it stains yellow and smells of aniseed. Very good eating, though it’s one of the fungi to which some people are allergic (eat a small amount if it’s your first time). Popular in Britain. Found in pastures August-November.
Field mushroom (Agaricus campestris*) Very good eating and the species from which the cultivated mushroom, Agaricus bisporus* was developed. Popular in Britain, where it’s the only fungi anyone really trusts. Found in pastures and meadows away from trees, August-November.
Cèpe, porcini or penny bun (Boletus edulis*) Excellent eating–the best. Mostly found in leafy woods, particularly beech. Looks like a shiny brown bun when damp, has spongy yellow-ivory underside instead of gills. Popular throughout but particularly in France, Italy, northern Spain, Switzerland, Germany and Austria. Found from late August to November.
Honey or bootlace fungus (Armillaria mellea*) Good eating, with a rich sweetish, meaty texture and flavour. Parasitic on rotten or dead trees, either frondose or conifer. Popular in Eastern Europe as a soup flavourer. Can be gathered July-December.
Chanterelle/girolle (Cantharellus cibarius*) Absolutely delicious, beautiful apricot-yellow fungi which thrives, half-hidden in fallen leaves and moss, in thick skeins under frondose woods. Popular in France, Scandinavia and Switzerland. To be found July-December.
Horn of Plenty (Craterellus cornucopioides*) Excellent eating and dries particularly well. Popular in France. From the same family as the chanterelle whose habitat it shares. A very dark (near black) fungus particularly fond of beech and birch woods. Can be found August-November.
Winter fungus (Flammulina velutipes) Good eating as long as you discard the stems, which are tough. This may explain why the fruiting bodies can survive the winter cold and so are available when supplies of the others have finished. Pale yellow gills, with a sticky-looking red-brown cap, winter fungus grows in clumps on the stumps of frondose trees. Popular in Eastern Europe. To be found from September to March.
Saffron milk cap (Lactarius deliciosus) Good eating, particularly popular in Catalonia and the Levant region of Sapin. The cap is a bright orange-brown, as are the stipes. It will weep orange tears, so wash its face well before cooking. Can be gathered in conifer woods from August to November.
Parasol mushroom (Lepiota procera*) Excellent eating. Popular in France and (to a lesser extent) in Britain. Looks not unlike the cultivated or field mushroom, but is taller, has a pronounced double ring round the stype, and a darker shaggy cap and white gills. Find it at the edges and clearings of frondose woods July-November.
Wood bluett (Tricholoma nuda) Both wonderful eating and a beauty in its own right–a delicate violet-coloured gill mushroom with a bronze sheen to the cap. Popular in France and Switzerland and throughout the region. Grows in woods and gardens and down road verges, cattle and sheep tracks and disused railway lines. Gather from late September to the end of December.
Giant puffball (Lycoperdon giganteum) As its name suggests, a very large puffball indeed. It can measure 1 foot in diameter, which makes good eating when young and white, though when older its insides disintegrate into dark powdery spores. Popular in Britain and Eastern Europe. Find it almost anywhere, in field, garden, or wood, from August through November.
Fairy ring (Marasmium oreades*) Delicate small mushrooms which grow in a ring in short grass, particularly on garden lawns. Popular for drying in Eastern Europe–particularly Romania and Hungary. Can be found from June to November.
Morel (Morchella esculenta*) For my money, the most delicious morsel of all. A spring mushroom with a distinctive wrinkled dark cap set rakishly on a pale stipe. Can be found all over the place, often as solitary specimens. It likes rich soil–meadows, hedgerows, and grassy banks. Its equally delicious cousin, Morchella vulgaris*, grows in woods and gardens. To be gathered from March to May.
Oyster mushroom (Pleurotus ostreatus) Excellent eating when young and tender, this fungus grows on decaying wood, particularly beech and sometimes conifers. I have reports of it growing on the rotting wood of old fishing boats, just above the tide line. It has pearly gills and a dark grey-blue cap, which makes it look rather like a smooth, inverted oyster shell. One of the few mushrooms which can be cultivated. Grows all year round.
Cardoncello (Pleurotus eringe) An oyster mushroom parasitic on the wild artichoke, Cardus eringe, popular in Puglia in southern Italy. Although the crop is now grown commercially on straw bales in a controlled environment, the texture is less robust and, naturally enough, no longer tastes of its wild host. Gathered July-December.
St. George’s mushroom (Amanita ponderosa) Excellent eating, a gill mushroom from a family (which, incidentally, includes the hallucinogenic Amanita mucaria; one of the most toxic of all the fungi) known in Provence as the barigoule, elsewhere in France as the mousseron. Firm, white and meaty, with the slight slipperiness of a boletus and a strong mushroomy fragrance. Popular in Switzerland, France and in the sierras of Spain’s most southerly province of Seville. The season runs from mid-Feb to end-April.
500g/1lb fresh fungi can be replaced by 50g/2 oz dried as a flavouring ingredient in soups, stews and sauces.
MUSHROOM RICE
Pilar cu zarzaratum (Romania)
Wild mushrooms, a gypsy crop, are used in Romania to flavour soups and stews, and in particular as an addition to a rice pilaf. Winter or honey fungus and fairy ring are particularly suitable for this recipe. If using dried mushrooms, soak for half an hour in warm water to swell, and include the soaking water in the recipe.
Quantity: Serves 4
Time: Preparation and cooking: 40 minutes
250g/8 oz long grain rice
2 thick slices streaky bacon or pancetta
1 onion with green top or small bunch of spring onions or chives
500g/1 lb wild or cultivated mushrooms
A large nugget of butter or bacon dripping
Salt and pepper
Utensils: A frying pan and a small saucepan
Pick over the rice. Cube the bacon small. Skin and chop the onion, reserving the green top to cook with the mushrooms (if using the spring onions or chives, chop and reserve).
Fry the bacon in a hot dry frying pan. If you heat the pan first, good bacon (that which has not been pumped full of water and saturated with chemicals) will not stick to it. Push the bacon to one side, and turn the onions and the rice in the bacon drippings until both are transparent (you may need a little extra fat or oil or butter). Add enough water to cover to a depth of one finger, bring to the boil, turn down the heat, season, and simmer the rice, uncovered, for 20 minutes until all the moisture is absorbed and the rice is tender.
Meanwhile, pick over and wipe your treasure trove of wild mushrooms–a pleasure which will fully occupy the 20 minutes which it takes the rice to become tender. That is, if you have a mound of beautiful wild fungi piled on your kitchen table–fresh from the woods, the green moss and autumn leaves still lightly pressed into their scented flesh. Hope for a few of the inky-dark Horn of Plenty or its cousin the apricot-scented golden-fleshed chanterelle–don’t forget to turn it over and admire the delicate cathedral-vault fluting of its gills. Or make the dish in the spring with dried autumn mushrooms and a handful of morels–look for the dark wrinkled cap and white stipe which share the fields with the first speckled purple orchids of the year–little stubby beasts among so many beauties.
Slice your crop of mushrooms. Melt the butter in a small pan. Fry the mushrooms in the butter until they have given up all their moisture and begin to sizzle again. At the last moment, stir in the onion tops or the chives, well chopped. Add salt and pepper in moderation. Mix the mushroom ragout into the warm rice. Heaven will have nothing more to offer.
CÈPES WITH PARSLEY AND GARLIC
Cèpes à la bordelaise (France)
Cèpes–penny buns, porcini, Boletus edulis–are the big bouncy brown fungi with the spongy yellow underpinnings. Baskets of them are to be found on sale in the markets of Bordeaux from July onwards, and this is the most delicious way of preparing them.
Quantity: Serves 3-4 as a starter
Time: Preparation and cooking: 30 minutes
500g/1 lb fine fresh cèpes
4-5 tablespoons olive oil
Salt and pepper
A handful of flat-leaf parsley
2 garlic cloves
2 tablespoons fresh breadcrumbs
Utensils: A frying pan
Wipe and slice the cèpes–removing, if you prefer, the spongy under parts (I don’t bother unless I have a glut–but then I like the gluey texture). Sprinkle with a little salt and set aside. Chop the parsley and crush the garlic. You need plenty of parsley–4 heaped tablespoons is not too much.
Put the oil to heat in a frying pan. When it’s warm but not smoking, put in the sliced fungi. Cook them gently for a few minutes–the wetter the day, the longer they need–until they yield up their water and start to sizzle once more. Add the garlic and parsley, and allow all to cook together gently for 5 minutes. Season with salt and pepper, and then stir in enough breadcrumbs to absorb all the juices. Turn the heat up for a moment. They are done. Serve piping hot with bread for mopping and a red wine from the Loire. Follow with a plain grilled steak and sauté potatoes fried in more butter and oil and the pan drippings from the fungi. For the digestion, a green salad which includes chervil and a touch of bitter chicory.
HORN OF PLENTY WITH CREAM ON TOAST
Croûtes aux trompettes à la crème (Switzerland)
The mountains and forests of Switzerland provide fertile gathering ground for all manner of fungi, and Swiss mushroom markets are in full swing throughout the year–as indeed are the phone lines which tell people whether what they’ve eaten is likely to be the cause of their stomach ache. The Swiss are enthusiastic fungi hounds and mistakes are by no means unknown. Trompettes de la mort–roughly translated, the last trump–sound like something you should by no account consume, but are among the most prized of the crop. The recipe is adaptable–you can substitute any old wild or cultivated mushroom, particularly the closely related yellow leg or the chanterelle, or the fresh morels of springtime.
Quantity: Serves 4
Time: Preparation and cooking: 30 minutes
500g/1 lb horn of plenty fungi (or chanterelles or cultivated button mushrooms)
2-3 tablespoons unsalted butter
A sprig of fresh thyme
1 small glass dry white wine
150ml/¼ pint double cream
2 tablespoons grated emmenthal or gruyère or cheddar
Salt and pepper
The croûte
4 slices of day-old bread (not the sliced kind, but good honest country bread, black or white)
1 garlic clove, for rubbing
Utensils: A frying pan
Brush the fungi caps carefully and slice off the hard earth tip of the stalk. If they are very large, slice them into strips. Heat the butter in a frying pan. When it is frothing (do not allow it to brown), add the fungi and the thyme leaves, stripped from the stalk. Season with salt and pepper and leave to simmer gently for at least 10 minutes–horn of plenty and other members of the chanterelle family need a little longer to cook than cultivated mushrooms. Turn the heat up and when the butter begins to sizzle, add the wine and bubble up till it no longer smells of alcohol. Stir in the cream. Allow all to bubble up again while you make the croûtes–thick slabs of toasted bread rubbed with garlic. Arrange them on a warm serving dish. Stir the grated cheese into the sauce and divide the contents of the pan between the croûtes. Finish with a vigorous twist of the pepper grinder and serve immediately.
Suggestions:
• For a dish of girolles au lard–chanterelles with bacon–omit the cream and include a handful of diced bacon and a generous handful of finely chopped parsley.
STUFFED SAFFRON MILK CAPS
Lactaires delicieux farcis (France)
Milk caps are a firm-fleshed mushroom with a rather alarming habit of bruising blue. The juices are milky–hence the name. Here they’re prepared to a recipe from the wooded slopes of the hills behind the Roman town of Vaison-La-Romaine.
Quantity: Serves 4
Time: Preparation and cooking: 30 minutes
12 perfect saffron milk caps
150ml/¼ pint olive oil
100g/4 oz minced pork or pure-pork sausage meat
2 heaped tablespoons fresh breadcrumbs
1 egg
2 tablespoons chopped parsley
1 garlic clove
1 teaspoon juniper berries
½ teaspoon black peppercorns
Salt and freshly milled pepper
Utensils: A shallow baking dish and a pestle and mortar
Wipe the caps and trim the woody end of the stalks. Arrange gill side down in an oiled baking dish, salt and pepper lightly and trickle with the rest of the olive oil. Leave to marinate while you prepare the stuffing.
Soak the breadcrumbs in a little water and then squeeze them dry. Mash them up with the minced pork, the egg, and the parsley. Crush the peeled garlic with salt and the juniper berries in a mortar, and then add them to the stuffing. Pepper generously and mix all well together.
Divide the stuffing among the milk caps, tucking it into the hollow. Spoon the oily drippings from the dish over the top. Either slip under a hot grill or bake in a hot oven–425°F/220°C/Gas 7–for 20 minutes. Best of all, roast in a covered pan over and under a fire of juniper twigs in the open air–dream on.
MUSHROOM FRITTERS WITH TARTAR SAUCE
(Slovakia)
The crisp little jacket of egg and breadcrumbs traps the flavour as well as ensuring the star ingredient goes further; as for the tartar sauce–well, that seems to have some connection with the horsemen from the steppes. Easy and cheap since the ingredients are all available to hand, a plateful comes automatically with a jug of new wine, fizzy and a little sweet, as served in the wine cellars of Svidnik, a small town in the foothills of the Tatras mountains in north-eastern Slovakia famous as Andy Warhol’s birthplace (inspection of which, for a small fee, can be arranged).
Quantity: Serves 4 wine imbibers
Time: Allow an hour for preparation and cooking–it takes patience
1 giant puffball or beefsteak fungus or 500g/1 lb large button mushrooms
2-3 tablespoons flour
Salt and pepper
2 eggs
1 tablespoon milk
4 heaped tablespoons home-made breadcrumbs
Oil for deep-frying
Tartar sauce
2 egg yolks
150ml/¼ pint soured cream
½ teaspoon salt
1 level teaspoon sugar
1 teaspoon mild mustard
2 tablespoons lemon juice or wine vinegar
1 tablespoon sunflower or light olive oil
½ glass white wine
1 tablespoon chopped dill
Utensils: 3 plates, a frying pan and a draining spoon; a bowl and a small saucepan
Wipe and slice the puffball or beefsteak fungus or whatever, if large.
Lay out three plates in a line: on the first spread out the flour seasoned with salt and pepper; put the eggs, lightly mixed together in the second; on the third spread out the breadcrumbs.
Make the sauce before you start the frying. Whisk the egg yolks together in a small bowl. Balance the bowl over a pan of boiling water. Whisk in the soured cream, the salt, sugar, mustard and lemon juice. As the sauce starts to thicken, whisk in the oil gradually, followed by enough of the white wine to give the consistency of a pouring custard. Whisk until all is smooth. Do not allow the sauce to boil. If it does, add it to an extra egg yolk in the blender and process till the sauce emulsifies again. Stir in the dill if using–in winter, replace with finely chopped onion sprout. Reserve.
Put a panful of deep oil on to heat–or organise your deep-fryer.
Meanwhile, dip the mushroom slices first in the seasoned flour, then in the egg (making sure it is all covered), finish by coating thoroughly in the breadcrumbs, pressing to ensure all is covered.
When the oil is lightly hazed with blue, slip in the first batch–not so many as will cause the temperature of the oil to drop. Fry until crisp and golden, turning them once. Remove and drain thoroughly on kitchen paper. Repeat until all are done. Serve crisp and hot, with the sauce handed separately.
Suggestions:
• In Hungary–particularly on the great plain, the pushta, where the fattened goose is a way of life–this is the way they like to serve their foie gras.
GRATIN OF CARDOON MUSHROOMS AND OROBANCHES
Teglia di cardoncelli e spocchia (Italy)
A teglia is a layered, baked dish of variable ingredients chosen for balance as well as seasonality, always including either rice or potatoes, which, like so many Mediterranean dishes (the Spanish paella, French tian) takes its name from the container in which it’s cooked. In Puglia, the use of an oven indicates a feast-day dish sent to the baker to be finished for a small fee (a luxury since every penny counts). The recipe combines two ingredients peculiar to the area: cardoncello, an oyster mushroom dependent on members of the artichoke family, and spocchia–orobanche or broom rape–parasitic asparagus-like shoots of a species dependant on the broad or fava bean, one of the most venerable of the Mediterranean’s cultivars. Throughout the area, both are encouraged as a secondary crop. Don’t be alarmed. The cardoncelli can be replaced by their close relation, cultivated oyster mushrooms, and the orobanches by fresh white asparagus.
Quantity: Serves 4-6
Time: Preparation: 15 minutes
Cooking: 45 minutes
500g/1lb cardoncelli or oyster mushrooms
500g/1lb spocchia or fat white asparagus (ones with purple tips are perfect)
1kg/2 lb old potatoes
4 tablespoons olive oil
2 large onions, skinned and finely chopped
2 garlic cloves, skinned and finely chopped
2 tablespoons chopped flat-leaf parsley
A glass of dry white wine
250g/8 oz mascarpone or fresh cream cheese
Salt and pepper
Utensils: A roomy saucepan, a frying pan, a gratin dish, foil
Pick over the fungi, trim and slice roughly. Rinse the spocchia shoots or asparagus and chop into short lengths.
Peel and slice the potatoes and cook in plenty of boiling salted water till perfectly tender. Drain thoroughly and reserve.
Meanwhile, heat the olive oil in a roomy frying pan and fry the chopped onion and garlic until soft and golden (don’t let it brown). Push aside and add the mushrooms. As soon as they yield up their juices, add the chopped orobanches or asparagus and turn them in the fragrant oil. Season with salt and pepper, pour in the wine and let everything bubble up till it no longer smells of alcohol and the juices are reduced by half.
Preheat the oven to 350°F/180°C/Gas 4.
Oil the base of the gratin dish and cover with a layer of the reserved potato slices. Spread the contents of the frying pan over the potatoes, spoon on the mascarpone or cream cheese, and top with the remaining potatoes. Season and trickle with a little more oil. Cover with foil (shiny side down) and set to braise in the oven for an hour. Check after 45 minutes, add a little boiling water if it look a little dry, and remove the foil to let the top bubble and brown. Serve with raw baby beans dumped on the table for people to pod their own as they do in Apulia.
SCRAMBLED EGGS WITH ST. GEORGE’S MUSHROOMS
Revuleto de gurumelos (Spain)
The gurumelo, Amanita ponderosa or St. George’s mushroom, pops up in the cistus and pine scrub in the spring, at the end of April, around St. George’s day–a fine, meaty, very aromatic mushroom, creamy fleshed and satisfying. The classic combination is with eggs–nothing takes the flavour of fungi like an egg. Here, as they serve it in the Bar Pantano at El Campillo in the province of Huelva, southern Spain, it comes in its cooking dish. And no matter if the fungi crop is not particularly prolific, you can always add a handful of potato cubes, a back-up flavouring of new season’s garlic. The proportion of egg should be about half that of the fungi.
Quantity: For 4, allowing 2 eggs per person
Time: 10 minutes
500g/1 lb St. George’s mushroom (or meaty button mushrooms)
2-3 fresh new garlics or large spring onions
8 eggs
4 tablespoons olive oil
Salt and pepper
Utensils: A shallow half-glazed earthenware casserole, tempered for direct heat
Wipe the mushrooms, trim and cut into bite-size pieces if large. Trim the new garlics–they should look like large spring onions, pearly white, and are gathered before the cloves have formed–or the spring onions.
Break the eggs into a bowl and fork them thoroughly with salt and freshly milled black pepper. Reserve.
Heat the oil gently in the casserole. Add the fungi and the garlics or spring onions and fry gently till the moisture has evaporated and they begin to take a little colour. Stir in the egg and remove from the heat. Serve with bread for mopping and eat immediately.
Suggestions:
• If you prefer a tortilla, prepare the mushrooms and fungi as above, then fold into the forked-up egg and fry gently on both sides in a small frying pan in a little olive oil, till the outside is set but the middle still a little soft.
TRUFFLES
There are three edible and esteemed European truffles, all wild gathered, of which only the black truffle has proved amenable to cultivation–although the yield remains uncertain and small. All are more localised in their distribution than other fungi. All three are delicious in their own way.
The first–and my own favourite–the Périgord or black truffle, Tuber melanosporum, whose price, in an unproductive year, approaches its weight in gold. Don’t bother with anything canned or sealed under glass or infused into oil–go for the real thing or not at all. You will pay a fortune for someone else’s gathering, or you will have to find yourself an accommodating pig or a well-trained truffle hound and search out your own, an activity which would almost certainly bring you into violent conflict with the owner of the scrubby patch of southern woodland you have chosen for your foray.
The alternative is to make your way to the hills of Upper Provence for a conversation with Monsieur Farnoux, hereditary oil presser to the village of Mirabelle-aux-Baronnies, whose neighbour Monsieur Bremen has a truffle-oak plantation. Monsieur Farnoux himself has long experience of truffle hunting. As a child in the 1940s, the years of the German occupation, he regularly collected basketsful of Périgord truffles–not to sell, you understand, because at that time there was no market, unless you sold to the enemy. Instead, the family ate the treasure themselves, savouring every mouthful since the isolated communities of the hills had to survive on what they could husband or gather for themselves. The gathering was easy. All he had to do was walk down the avenue of lime trees that skirted the olive tree plantations which led from the village to the road. Whenever his sharp eyes spotted a little mound of cracked earth by the tree roots, he would stop and stamp his foot. If a little red fly flew away from the mound, he knew that that was the place to dig for the truffle. It would take only a morning for him and his brother to fill their basket (at today’s prices they would swiftly have become Provence’s youngest millionaires). No fancy cooking was necessary, certainly nothing involving Michelin chefs, he said. You had only to get your hands on a little flour to make a jacket. Then what you had to do was brush the truffles clean, and then wrap each up in a piece of dough made with flour, water, and a little salt. These you rolled into the warm ashes at the edge of the kitchen fire and piled them with hot embers. There they would roast for about half an hour, until the outside was blackened like an overdone chestnut. Then a quick turn with the knife would free the truffle, steaming and fragrant and perfectly cooked, to be eaten with its gritty jacket. The problem in those days, he added, was not how to find the truffle; it was how to get the wherewithal to make the jacket, and many was the time when the truffles were roasted in their earthy coverings alone.
To prepare a Périgord truffle–if you are fortunate, knowledgeable, or rich enough for one to come your way–clean off the earth with a little brush, wipe with a damp cloth, then chop it and scramble it delicately with fine fresh eggs from your own or your neighbours’ hens. By fresh and fine, I mean eggs from free-range hens whose wanderings you have observed and whose diet includes worms and grubs and wild foods of every kind. There is nothing mysterious about the superiority of eggs from free-range chickens. Like the fruit of the vine–as every experienced wine taster knows–eggs pick up the flavours, colours, and scents of the surroundings which produce them. If you prefer, leave the truffle in the egg basket overnight to perfume the eggs, then soft cook the eggs, slice the raw truffle on the cucumber slicer of the grater and toss quickly in hot butter, and serve both together heaped on a thick slab of fresh bread. In season from early December to March.
The second–and, to Italians, the only truffle worth considering–is the creamy-fleshed Piedmont or white truffle, Tuber magnatum. Unlike the black, this is best appreciated in the raw. To prepare, brush off the earth, and then wipe the beech-leaf brown nugget clean with a damp cloth–no need to peel. Sliver finely and scatter a careless magnificence–very Lorenzo di Medici–over home-made pasta or a juicy risotto or, best of all, a fonduta. The white truffle season opens in September, by mid-October it is in full swing, November is the best month of all.
The summer truffle, Tuber aestivum–also known as the cook’s truffle for its modesty and usefulness–is the commonest of the three and the only variety native to the British Isles (in spite of rumours to the contrary). Although it is not as highly esteemed as the others, the 17th century diarist and epicure, John Evelyn, speaks warmly of it and lists Northamptonshire as fertile soil for truffle hounds. The summer truffle is prepared for cooking in the same way as the black truffle, and can be cooked in any way suitable for ordinary mushrooms.
TRUFFLE SALAD WITH EGG YOLKS
Petite salade fermière aux truffes (France)
A windfall of truffles requires the simplest of treatments–the best first-pressing virgin olive oil, and free-range eggs. This recipe is from the olive and wine territory of the Rhone valley, Avignon–seat, in medieval times, of the Popes-in-exile, connoisseurs of the good things of life.
Quantity: Serves 5-6
Time: Preparation: 30 minutes
1 black truffle per person (weighing about 25g/1 oz)
500g/1 lb root artichokes (topinambours) or small potatoes (charlotte, la ratte)
Small bottle extra virgin first-pressing olive oil
Rough salt
To dress
Three raw egg yolks
Juice of 1 lemon
1 tablespoon olive oil
Pepper and salt
Utensils: A large saucepan and a small bowl
Brush and wipe the truffles, remove the knobbly outer skin and pop one in the olive oil bottle to infuse for an hour or two, reserving the rest. Meanwhile, scrape the root artichokes–fiddly, but worth it–or scrub the potatoes, and cook till tender in well-salted water–40 minutes for one, 15-20 for the other–drain well, dress with 4 tablespoons of the infused oil, rough salt and a sprinkle of vinegar and allow to cool to room temperature.
Slice the truffles finely and then matchstick them. Lightly beat together the egg yolks, freshly milled pepper, a little salt, lemon juice, and another tablespoon of the olive oil. Turn the truffle matchsticks in this little sauce and heap on the potatoes. Serve with plenty of fresh bread and the best bottle of wine in the house–perhaps a bottle from the Avignon Pope’s own summer stronghold, Chateauneuf du Pape, where the vines flourish in fields of golden pebbles.
Suggestions:
• For the Périgord version–an area where olive is replaced by walnut oil–prepare Truffes et cernaux. Prepare as above, but with the addition of a handful of green walnuts, fresh and milky and slipped out of their bitter brown skins, and use walnut rather than olive oil for the dressing. To make it even more special, top with a few scraps of goose skin from the confit pot, fried crisp in its own lard. Exquisite.
TRUFFLE AND POTATO GRATIN
Gratin de pommes de terres aux truffes (France)
Here’s how to make the most of a single truffle–even better than fillet steak (and probably cheaper, however much you have to pay for the truffle).
Quantity: Serves 4
Time: Preparation and cooking: 30 minutes
1.5kg/3 lb old floury potatoes
1 small truffle weighing about 25g/1 oz
1 garlic clove
A little butter
300ml/½ pint single cream
Salt and pepper
Utensils: A large pan, a small pan and an earthenware casserole
Scrub and cook the potatoes in their skins in plenty of well-salted water until soft, 20 minutes or so. Drain thoroughly and peel as soon as they are cool enough to handle. Cut them into thick slices.
Brush and rinse the truffle and slice, outside and all.
Preheat the oven to 300°F/150°C/Gas 2 and bring the cream to the boil in a small pan.
Arrange half the potatoes in the base of an earthenware casserole rubbed with a little butter and a cut clove of garlic, and pour in half the hot cream. Lay on a layer of truffles, then the rest of the potatoes. Pour in the rest of the cream, season and dot with little bits of butter. Cover with foil (shiny side down). Bake for half an hour. Serve with a light salad and a bottle of white wine from the Rhone valley.