We’ve got a little competition going on our Facebook page right now to win one each of our varieties of mushrooms and a hand crafted juniper wood spatula, made in Sweden by our friend Erik Sved. All you have to do is share the photo on the page linked above before 16.00 this Sunday 24th Feb to be in with a chance.

And don’t forget that we’ve currently got a special offer on our autumn Gather & Cook Weekends in West Sweden – get a group of 4 together and  book before the end of Feb to get a massive £60 pp discount. Just doing our bit to help make February a little cheerier!

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We love to try new recipe ideas to see what works with our dried mushrooms. Especially the Winter Chanterelles, because the only other place we’ve seen them on sale dried is Sweden, and the taste is so different to the Porcini and other ceps you find in the shops here in the UK. They have a delicious tang that makes them particularly suitable to use with other strong flavours, and having tried (and enjoyed) a commercial mushroom tapenade before we really wanted to find a recipe that would work with our wild beauties. And here it is! We hope you’ll find, like us, that the combination of Winter Chanterelles and black olives is a match made in heaven. This dish will only take you 30 mins at the most to prepare and makes a fantastic appetiser to have on its own or with other tapas. You’ll find how to make it on our recipe page. Enjoy!

 
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Just a little reminder about the great group discount on the price of our Gather & Cook weekend fungus forays in south west Sweden…

If a group of four book together, the price per person drops from £460 to £420. Get your skates on and book before the end of February and we’ll give you an extra discount bringing the price per head down to £400 each. Don’t forget the price includes pick up and drop off at the airport, 4 nights accommodation in our cosy cottages, all meals, accompanied fungus forays and other excursions, convivial company and really great locally sourced food. To make the experience even more unforgettable you’ll get to stay on an island in a truly beautiful, unspoilt part of the world, Sweden. Really, what more could you want?

So if you and your mates are interested in finding out more about edible wild mushrooms, want some inspiration in the kitchen, or just love the outdoors, then you need to give us a call. There are 3 weekends to choose from this year, at the end of August, early September and the beginning of October.

There’s more information about the holidays on the website, and you can contact us:

by phone: 01663 745146 by email: info@getfunghi.co.uk, on Facebook or Twitter.

We’re in Sweden during the Gothenburg International Film Festival and managed to find an American film about mushroom pickers in the programme. Naturally we had to go and see it, so yesterday we filed into the Biopalatset with a bunch of other film or funghi enthusiasts and watched Now, Forager: a Film about Love and Funghi. We were impressed by the lovely cinematography – the scenes in the forest were beautiful, with great shots of interesting flora and fauna, especially wild mushrooms of course. Lucien, the lead male character in the film, names and describes the mushrooms he forages as the film progresses, and there’s a poignant moment when he’s city based and the camera picks out concrete and metal urban furniture that get given mushroom names instead of the real thing. It’s a memorable little low budget film, worth watching for the scenery, what you’ll learn about mushrooms, and the recurrent theme of great food, but we felt the love mentioned in the title was lacking a little. Thankfully we have loads more fun picking mushrooms together in the woods than poor Lucien and his wife Regina seemed to have!

The film is showing tomorrow in Gothenburg and at the Glasgow Film Festival in the UK on February 22nd /23rd. For more info have a look at the website: nowforager.com
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Tasting coming up! We’ll be at the lovely Eighth Day Vegetarian Healthfood Shop & Cafe on Oxford Rd in Manchester on Tuesday 5 Feb, from 11-2. If you haven’t tried Winter Chanterelles before, now’s your chance. This little forest floor mushroom packs a taste punch well above its weight! We have a recipe on our website for a delicious Winter Chanterelle soup that knocks the socks off your average bland soup made with button mushrooms, and once you’ve tasted them in a sauce you won’t want any other. The taste is sharper and more earthy than Porcini, which is often described as having a mild, nutty flavour, and so lends itself to other strong tasting ingredients – game for instance, or a good strong tasting cheese. The big advantage of dried mushrooms of course is their long shelf life, making them a really useful kitchen cupboard staple. And if you want the pleasure of picking them in the wild yourselves, then come with us to Sweden on one of Gather & Cook short breaks!

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Out on a walk in the Peak District the weekend before last we came across a lovely bracket of Oyster Mushrooms, another fungi that grows all year round. Very popular in Chinese cookery of course, they have a firm texture and particular taste that lends itself well to all sorts of other dishes. We added them to soups & stir-fries and they were delicious with crispy bacon and the works for Sunday brunch the next day.

There’s a lovely Mediterranean Oyster Mushrooms recipe on our website for you to try, with chilli and garlic, which makes a great dish to add to a selection of tapas. Perfect with a good dry sherry or a crisp white wine.

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We meet a lot of people at our tasting sessions who confess that they wouldn’t have the confidence to pick mushrooms in the wild. They’re really keen to have a go and they’ve often got a book to take with them but we hear the same refrain again and again: “I can’t tell from the photo or description in the book if it’s the right mushroom so I don’t dare pick it.” 

A really good way to get over that fear is to go out with an expert who will show you what you need to look out for to recognise a few varieties of wild mushrooms you will then be able to pick with confidence. The good news is that many of the tastiest and most common funghi can be classed as ‘beginners mushrooms’ – this means they can’t be confused with any unsavoury variety of mushroom. Chanterelles, ceps & hedgehog mushrooms for instance all fall into this category – common, delicious and unmistakeable, once you have learnt the characteristics of that family.

During late summer and early autumn we run a variety of fungus forays: afternoon walks in the High Peak and three day stays on Orust Island in South West Sweden, where you will be able to learn a lot more than just mushroom identification. On last year’s Gather & Cook  breaks our guests sliced porcini for drying, made Winter Chanterelle mushroom sauce, picked and tasted at least ten varieties of edible wild mushrooms and went ‘boat mushrooming’ on a trip to a small uninhabited island in the fjord. It’s not all about funghi – a popular excursion was to the quaint fishing village of Mollösund where we visited the local fishmonger and had a seafood feast when we got home. 

If you want to extend your stay in Sweden to experience more of what this beautiful country has to offer talk to us – our houses are available to rent for longer periods, and we’re more than happy to give you suggestions for activities to do in the area or other parts of the country. The west coast is renowned for its seafood if you are into food tourism and there are of course any number of water based sports like kayaking, fishing  or sailing to do, whilst the terrain in this region really lends itself to cycling, walking & horse riding if you prefer to stay on land.

For more ideas you can visit the official site for tourism in Sweden here. Bohuslän is the region in West Sweden Orust island is located in, and more specific information on our lovely island Orust in the Southern Bohuslän archipelago, can be found here.

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Happy New Year! We’re off to a fine start with a mushroom tasting at Fosters of Chapel on Sat Jan 12th from 10 -1, our first there so really looking forward to it. Jason’s deli is a veritable treasure trove of fine ingredients so come and say hi and grab a wild mushroom toastie to nibble while you mooch!

You’ll find the shop, with it’s fantastic range of fresh flowers, fruit and veg as well as the deli, on the corner of Market St/Hayfield Rd East in Chapel-en-le Frith. For more information, recipes and details of their other services have a look at their website here.

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There’s not an awful lot happening in the world of funghi at this time of year but we spotted these Jelly Ears out walking yesterday. We’ve not eaten them ourselves but for a tasty soup recipe and lots of background info on the history of the name and the medicinal value of this mushroom have a look at Nick Weston’s Hunter:Gather:Cook blog from 24/1/2011.

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At this time of year comfort food takes centre stage. It’s dark and getting darker, cold and in our wet British climate, often gloomy outside, so it’s lovely to get in the kitchen as the light disappears and cook up a casserole, where the flavours melt into and complement each other and there’s minimal effort required to make or eat it.

On the menu for the Nobel Winners Banquet in Stockholm this year was Pheasant with Chanterelles, and so in honour of that we borrowed and adapted a Hugh Fearnley Whittingstall recipe, to include our favourite hearty, gamey, casserole ingredient: Winter Chanterelles. They really bring out the strong flavours of pheasant, beef or venison, so it’s a match made in heaven, and the perfect dish for a cosy night in with friends, family, the fire lit and a good bottle of something to enjoy. And on that celebratory note we’d like to wish all of you a really happy Christmas and a wonderful New Year. We’re looking forward to meeting more of you in 2013 at one of our mushroom tastings or forays in the UK or out in Sweden with us picking your own!

Comfort food par excellence.
Bon appetit!

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