cep | Edimentals !

My daughter asked if we’d like to come and join her and her friend in Napolitana (the village pizza restaurant). We were actually just about to eat pizza with new zealand spinach (NZ spinat), broad beans (bondebønner), Johannes shallots (Sankthans-sjalott), patience dock (hagesyre), sea kale (strandkål) and steinsopp (cep / porcini) topping with Hartington Silver thyme (timian) in the tomato sauce with chili….on a sourdough pizza made with 100% wholegrain barley (bygg), svedjerug (Svedje rye), spelt and emmer wheat.
We ate at home!

Rumex patientia (patience dock; hagesyre), New Zealand spinach (Tetragonia), broad beans, Johannes shallots and young sea kale shoots

Attractive young purple leaves on one of my sea kale plants

I can’t remember the last time we had a porcini (cep, penny bun) or steinsopp in Norwegian year here, well over 10 years I think!! There are huge amounts for the pickings…and they were all in good condition with almost no insect larvae nor the parasitic fungi (snyltesopp) which makes them inedible.

There were also large amounts of saffron milk caps (matriske) again unusually for the time of year completely free of insect larvae!

Perhaps the warm dry weather was good for the fungi but not the flies!

I had to stop as I was afraid the load would be too much for the bike brakes on the very steep descent home!
Strangely, the most common edible fungi (chantarelle and hedgehog fungus/ kantarell og piggsopp) were almost totally absent!

Now, the job to dry them and return to the woods a couple more times to dry enough for the next porcini year!