Tag Archives: saffron milk caps

Food, Perennial vegetables

Sochan tops Mediterranean style

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Thanks to Alan Bergo (@foragerchef) for reminding me to try sochan tops. This is Rudbeckia laciniata (cut-leafed coneflower) which in the double form is one of the most popular garden ornamentals here in Norway over the last 100 years and a plant that has been commercialised as a farm vegetable over recent years in Korea. I’d previously only eaten the spring shoots, but I was equally impressed by the tops which I used simply cooked with onion, garlic and  yellow zucchini from the garden, various fungi picked in the woods (saffron milkcap/matriske; hedgehog fungus / piggsopp and chantarelles / kantarell) and scrambled with eggs with a little chilim added (a classic way for preparing wild edibles in the Mediterranean countries. See the pictures below.
See other posts on this great vegetable which was introduced to me in one of Samuel Thayer’s books:
Appalachian Greens 
Cherokee Pizza 

Cycling, Foraging, Fungi

Fungal bonanza by bike and job creation

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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!

Eikeskrubb (Leccinum quercinum / Orange oak bolete) which also grows on aspen :


Berries, Fungi

Fungi 26th August 2016

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It was actually bilberries that were the evening’s objective, but when you see several ceps / steinsopp in the woods and hedgehogs/piggsopp and saffron milk caps / matriske (almost all surprisingly in good condition without fly larvae) and chantarelles / kantarell, then there’s a change of plan….and there was still time to pick more than enough bilberries for drying another ovenfull!

 

Food

Barl-ryotto

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Last night’s dinner: risotto made with rye and barley grain instead of rice with wild and cultivated vegetables and wild fungi:
Parsley, coriander, golpar (Heracleum maximum seed spice), 3 types of pea, baby carrots and broad beans, red mitsuba, 3 types of chicory, common sow thistle (Sonchus), saffron milk caps (matriske), hedgehog fungus (piggsopp), chanterelle (kantarell), Russula spp. , garlic, chili, nettle (variegated), swiss chard (mangold) and Allium nutans…
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