Shooting Times & Country Magazine
MUSHROOM DELIGHTS
All the fun of the fungi with these foraged treats
There are few things that are more inviting to pick than a fresh field mushroom. Not only do they look good, they smell good too. I was reminded of the joys of mushroom picking on a recent visit to Kent. Giving the dogs a walk across a field of pasture, I came across a number of mushrooms, gleaming white in the sparkling, dew-drenched grass. I was able to fill my hat with enough for a tasty risotto.
Picking those mushrooms reminded me of shooting days, long ago, when I belonged to a syndicate in the Sussex Weald. On early-season outings it was quite normal to come home with a gamebag stuffed with mushrooms, and they made the perfect accompaniment to whatever we had managed to shoot. It was excellent mushroom ground and there were fields that could be relied upon, every autumn, to produce a bountiful crop.
Though I like to think that I’m a reasonable all-round naturalist, I’m not really very good on fungi, so I’m careful on what I pick. The two species I am confident with are field mushrooms, Agaricus campestris, and horse mushrooms Agaricus arvensis. I like young puffballs, too, especially fried in butter and garlic as they tend not to have much flavour. I don’t bother with shaggy inkcaps, though they are regarded as good eating when still young.
I’ve only once made a mistake, when I picked yellow-staining mushrooms, a species that some people can eat, while others suffer from severe gastric upsets. Though they got as far as a frying pan, I never ate one — as soon as the flesh is broken it bruises bright yellow. Yellowstainers tend to grow in hedges rather than open fields, and are not that common.
I reckon that mushroom gathering numbers among one of the best perks of picking-up early in the season, though in arable East Anglia there’s far less opportunity to pick them. Mushrooms like permanent pasture, something we are rather short of here in Suffolk. It’s always a good idea to pack a plastic bag or two in the gamebag, just in case.
For parents, the school summer holiday is very much like listening to the pub bore tell a joke. You know it is going to be terrible, and inevitably it doesn’t disappoint, dragging on and on and on. Realisation dawns, you have heard it before and when the punchline mercifully hoves into view you discover that your glass is empty and you really need another stiff drink. Obviously for children it’s something quite different. The near eight weeks of freedom is the best, most hilarious thing that has happened since the two weeks off at Easter.
Therefore my wife decided, rather than resort to booze, if you can’t beat kids — metaphorically speaking not literally — you may as well join them. She threw herself into the joys of summer; researching, planning, organising and accompanying my son and his pals on an array of educational, cultural and physical entertainments. I, meanwhile, chose a less esoteric path, working the group of young blighters to the bone wherever and whenever possible, all under the guise of this toil being ‘character-building fun’.
All in a day’s work
On one particularly still and sweltering day, I enlisted my son Charlie and his new best friend Marley to assist me in ‘underkeeper’ duties. The stack of feeders at Flea Barn were not going to clean themselves and the release pen needed a good tidy up before the 100 poults arrived and made it their home. “Will we get paid?” Charlie asked. I responded in a negatively miser-like fashion, then added by way of persuasion, “If you work hard I will take you both fishing after.” This seemed to quell any industrial disputes and the two boys and I happily set off to the farm with the back of the truck stuffed with brushes, barrels of water, packets of Virkon S and a strimmer.
In risk assessment terms, 11-yearold boys and strimmers come under the column marked ‘high’. Therefore while I whirred away with the machine, clearing nettle, thistle