to catch and eat a wild mushroom

proper parks, as in with copses of trees as well as play areas and lawns are our prefered place of play, especially this time of year. leaf piles, acorns, sticks. puddles, worms, mud. we take claud for a run in the park like you might a dog, laughing as she goes feral, liberating her pent-up sitstillonthematuseyourindoor voiceputthatdown kid wildness. on our most recent trip out as claud hared off shrieking, poking her stick at anything pokable we saw a man, lurking in the trees ahead.

terry, having never met a person he could resist talking to strode over. on hearing "...looking for mushrooms" as i approached, i briefly fantasised about the whistle trained obedience of dogs and von trapp children, knowing claud in her just released-into-the-wild state wasn't going to come to heel  willingly come hold my hand to prevent her messing with 'shrooms. as the guy turned to me though i relaxed, recognizing him as an ex-colleague. after a slightly uncomfortable reacquaintance; me (overcompensating?)-"wow, so great to see you" (hug). him-"erm, what's your name again?" he, and his partner who subsequently emerged from the bushes generously instructed us in the gentle art of mushroom hunting.

for it is porcini season people! in christchurch! who would have thought it? probably not the colonists who shipped over the now mature english trees which harboured the spores in the roots, and certainly not me. as soon as the couple left bearing a teeshirt bowlful each, we started to search. the porcini are very difficult to spot being the same colour as the leaf litter. or maybe they were just cowering from the sudden onset of decibels in their quiet corner of the wood. but ten minutes in, shuffling and scanning by eye and by foot we scored us our first, giving us a high, a special foragers high not available when buying the dried version down the deli (or indeed, ingesting mushrooms of the naughty kind).

back home i dug out my david mellor mushroom brush, pleased to have a tool of wild mushroom worship. it must have been modelled on a porcini mustn't it?! but, cute as a button (mushroom) it may be on the bench, it is in the field a mushroom brush is required (along with a basket) as the dirt soon dries and resists the brush off. mud scraped and sliced they are a thing of beauty. the mature, mustard-gilled ones made me want to sue orla kiely for ripping off nature. the ones alive with worms on the inside made me want to shower in bleach.

we set aside the smallest, tastiest porcini and dried the rest, taking the edge off my sense of store cupboard deprivation (we're not preserving this year due to the demands of newborndom).  then after dribilating (deciding between equally drool inducing recipes) over my silver spoon, in the end we settled on fresh porcini risotto, which is reportedly a traditional italian autumn dish. terry then unwhetted his appetite by pouring over multiple porcini identification guides on the net while i stirred, 'just to make sure'. though we have it on good authority that there are no poisonous mushrooms in NZ that resemble a porcini, worry is his way.  but in the end the aroma which won him over from his 'you eat it first so i can look after the kids if you die' wild mushroom position.

we lived to tell the tale, and it was a delicious one.