The fairy rings caught our attention first. On the last day of the school holidays we were driving to buy garden mulch. Like most of the State we received a huge downfall of rain, 74.8mm in 24 hours. Thankfully it was the gentle, soaking kind of rain and we wanted to keep as much of the moisture in the soil as possible. After the rain our neighbour’s paddock was covered with not only fairy rings, but dotted with white crests where he’d spread manure as fertiliser before Christmas and mushroom spores had sprouted.
We pulled into the paddock and showed the boys the fairy rings. Fairy rings are naturally occurring circles of mushrooms that appear in the grass. The boys were enchanted by the folklore surrounding fairy rings, that they are gateways to elfin kingdoms or places where pixies and fairies dance. We vowed to return in the cool of the evening to pick some mushrooms for dinner.
Armed with a large colander we walked down the driveway, across the road, and climbed through the wire fence into the paddock. There was no shortage of mushrooms. Confident they were edible and not poisonous, after an online search, we easily lifted the white knobs from the earth and quickly filled the colander. Dinner that night was a mixed grill of wild mushrooms and homegrown zucchini, eggplant, capsicum and beef.
Then began the hunt for information on preserving mushrooms. There were too many to eat in one sitting. A recipe for pickled mushrooms preserved in oil appealed. Over 24 hours this involved slicing the mushrooms, salting them to release excess water, pickling them in vinegar, drying them and storing them in olive oil with chilli, lemon zest, bay leaf and marjoram.
We exchanged ideas with our neighbours and friends for using the mushrooms. Toni tried out the “Hot Car” method of drying mushrooms. We had grilled mushrooms on toast for breakfast, used mushrooms in an egg and bacon pie for dinner and threaded mushrooms on linen to air dry them. We thought the mushrooms would disappear within days, but instead more continue to push their way through the pasture. We’ll enjoy them while they last. A gift from the elves. Note: Please be super careful when foraging for mushrooms and reference a reliable source to ensure they are the edible kind.
Category: Recipes
Step 1: Cream butter and sugar until smooth
It has been a week of baking, giving the oven and mixer a workout sometimes late into the night. It started with chocolate crackles (OK, not strictly baking), pizza muffins (yuck, never again), spider cupcakes, and a spooky castle birthday cake midweek, followed by Mexican wedding biscuits, peanut butter and choc chip biscuits and polenta for a weekend writing retreat. It’s times like these when it is handy to step next door and raid the O&Mc stores of Demeter flour and polenta and I am thankful that our Isa Browns are back to laying three eggs a day. Now if only we had a house cow…
Here’s my new favourite biscuit recipe. Big thumbs up from eight hungry writers at the Nundle Writing Retreat last weekend and the Trousdale family enjoying the leftovers.
Peanut and chocolate biscuits (Source: Matthew Evans, torn from Good Weekend, Nov 13, 2010)
You need 150g dark brown sugar, 100g butter, softened, 1 egg, 1/2 tsp vanilla, 300g crunchy peanut butter, 1/2 tsp salt, 1/2 tsp bicarb soda, 225g plain flour, 200g dark chocalte chips.
Preheat the oven to 180 degrees Celcius. Beat the sugar and butter until smooth, then beat in the egg and vanilla. Beat in the peanut butter, then fold in the salt, bicarb and flour. Mix until combined, then fold in the choc chips. Roll mixture into small balls and lay on trays lined with non-stick baking paper. Press down with a fork to about 1cm thick and bake for 10 minutes. Good luck letting them cool before small fingers want to reach for them and taste test. Better make a double batch.
WHITE ENAMEL PIE DISH 