There's a guy at the Portobello Road market who sells only mushrooms. (A sign on his stall says, "No, I don't sell the magic kind.") He has the most amazing variety of mushrooms I've ever seen in one place, though admittedly I am not a mushroom aficionado.
The other day he was displaying a big bowl of what looked like pink chrysanthemums. He told me they were oyster mushrooms. Knowing Dave loves mushrooms, and knowing his desire for new cooking challenges, I bought some. I also picked up a few British beech mushrooms which, unfortunately, were not nearly as photogenic.
Last night Dave cooked these mushrooms into a chorizo risotto. We liked trying them out, but ultimately they didn't seem to have a great deal of flavor. Maybe they were simply overpowered by the chorizo. (To be fair, the mushroom man warned me they were very mild and more for texture and color than taste.)
We spent yesterday watching movies, including "The Lost World" from 1960, where a group of adventurers encounter dinosaurs in the jungle and have to escape through a lava-filled cave. Jill St. John wore a pair of slim-fitting '60s pants during the ordeal that, come to think of it, were pretty much the color of our oyster mushrooms!
My husband, who is a chef, thinks that mushrooms are the perfect food. He had a business, recently closed, whose motto included a delicate French drawing of a mushroom -- I think he said that they "take" to any kind of cooking and impart the full range of flavors. They are weird looking, though, and there's something about them that makes me slightly put off, although I do eat them.
ReplyDeleteThey are almost too lovely to cut up and cook.
ReplyDeletethey are very pretty. I especially like the close up.
ReplyDeleteand yes I did save the tadpoles and minnows, as many of them as I could capture and separate from the muck. they are all now back in the pond.
I ate a mushroom in england once- It was the wrong sort and made me very ill. I can not even tolerate the smell of mushrooms now, even the happy kind. But that is a very pretty shroom you have there! I love that you found that stamp in previous post! Very cool!
ReplyDeleteIf there is one food item in the world that I could never put to my mouth, it's mushrooms.
ReplyDeleteThough they do look pretty :)
oh, and 'bolting', that's when plants like lettuce and spinach, etc. send up their bloom stalk. it makes the leaves small and coarse and bitter.
ReplyDeleteNIce macro shot of beautiful mushrooms!
ReplyDeleteOyster mushrooms have a very delicate flavor so they might have been a bit overwhelmed by the chorizo.
Excellent macro shot!!!
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