400g of St. George’s Mushroom / VårfagerhattSand leek / Bendelløk, even though smaller, are more productive than leeks / purre here
Two gourmet ingredients (and many more) for tonight’s green pasta sauce are just doing their own thing in my edible garden with little interference from me, apart from the picking. First the patch of St. George’s Mushroom (vårfagerhatt; Calocybe gambosa) growing under a large birch tree next to a large patch of nettles and then sand leeks (bendelløk; Allium scorodoprasum) which self-sow from bulbils on the seakale bed (strandkål; Crambe maritima) in the seaweed mulch. The St George’s mushrooms are growing to the right of the chair The seakale / strandkål bed is full of sandleeks / bendelløk
The St. George’s mushrooms (vårfagerhatt) come up every year under the old birch tree next to my sitting place in the garden. They weren’t really growing much more in the heat and drought, so they were harvested for a little lunch stir-fry with fresh asparagus and the last of the heirloom shallots (Finland) from storage.
This week, the tastiest part of turkish rocket / russekål (Bunias orientalis), the broccolis (affectionately known as brockets here!), were ready to harvest! Although considered an unwanted invasive nowadays in Norway, my 30 year old plant has never produced a seed. However, the plant died (I thought) a couple of years ago only for a number of new plants to appear from the roots some distance away. I hadn’t realised it did this. I was also puzzled to read on the Norwegian invasive species database that it is biennial and spreads aggressively by seed (see https://artsdatabanken.no/Fab2018/N/602). Anyway, it made a delicious lunch stir-fried with St. George’s mushroom (vårfagerhatt), some leftover cooked potatoes and mixed into scrambled egg with chili and garlic. Read more in my book Around the World in 80 plants.
Earlier this week with little time to make dinner this was the unlikely result: St. George’s, ramsons and red-leaved dandelion leftover pasta with Hosta icicles in Japanese dip. Earlier in the day I had noticed a patch of St George’s Mushroom / vårfagerhatt (Calocybe gambosa) in the same spot it had turned up for the first time 3 years ago (see St. George’s Mushroom). They were then stir-fried with ramsons (ramsløk) and red-leaved dandelion (Taraxacum rubifolium) and some left-over wholewheat spelt pasta and were served with fried egg on home made garlic toast with a few prawns and some blanched Hosta “Big Daddy” shoots (Hosta icicles) as a side salad with an olive oil /soy sauce dip and the last bottle of St. Peter’s organic pale ale. LIFE IS GOOD!
I’ve been hoping this species would one day arrive in the garden and a week ago I noticed a small group of St George’s Mushroom (Vårfagerhatt) or Calocybe gambosa emerging right next to where I sit in the garden next to a birch tree and on the edge of what was once a “lawn”. This spring fruiting species has its English name as it usually appears around St. George’s Day, 23rd April, a month later up here in the north!
200519
260519
260519: One of the tastiest fungi!!
The first time I saw this species was on 7th June 2008 when my great inspirator Jan Erik Kofoed introduced me to it on the island Tautra on the other side of the fjord from here!
210514: I found a group of them under birch trees at Ranheim on my bike ride home from work, here in my bike bag!
210514: Cleaned at home!
A sign on the common near where my brother Trevor Barstow lives where one or two lakes are named after this mushroom..
Perennial vegetables, Edimentals (plants that are edible and ornamental) and other goings on in The Edible Garden
The St George’s mushrooms are growing to the right of the chair 
The seakale / strandkål bed is full of sandleeks / bendelløk
