Tasty in any Language

Anne points out she only knows how to pick mushrooms in Swedish and French. But that's okay... They are delicious in any language!

Fred and Anne canoed along the shoreline this week, exploring and searching for mushrooms. They came back with a bag of Chanterelles. Not only are these beautiful, with their strong orange colour, but they smell like apricots and taste divine fried up with some butter and cream, served on crackers with a slice of avocado.

Chanterelle mushrooms, sometimes called Queen of the Forest, is the mushroom many of the world's great chefs prize above all others. in Italian, they are known as Girolle. In German, Pfifferling. Wherever you harvest them, and however you pronounce it, they are prized for their superb flavor.

Chanterelles are only found in the wild. So far, efforts to cultivate Chanterelles have never proved successful. Fred has done fairly well at encouraging them to grow near his cottage here at Bondi by carefully putting the scrapings from the kitchen in appropriate places.

Tough and mild, Chanterelles have that slight spicy edge which is characteristic of things that grow on their own in the forests and fields - something that comes from competing in a natural environment.

Our 600 acres of surrounding wilderness is a great place to go harvesting mushrooms. If, like Anne and Fred, you know what to look for. If you don't, you should be sure to take along someone who knows their mushrooms...