Sunday 18 September 2011

Pauper's porcini

Funny how Italian peasant food is now some of the most expensive scoff you can buy. Pizza has the highest mark-up of any high street food, "wild" rocket costs more than sausages, and dried mushrooms run from £70 a kilo to however deep your pockets are. Time to get back to your roots.

We've got a great weekly market, and when I can buy a big box of mushrooms for £2 I'm buggered if I'm going to spend a damp morning looking for wild fungi to poison myself with. Top pic is just over half the mushrooms (rest in soup and pies) sliced and laid over the Aga to dry: an airing cupboard would work just as well.
Pic below is 24 hours later: crunchy dried mushrooms ready for a winter of risottos, soups and ragu. At least £40 at retail, but a solitary quid to me. All those Yummy-Mummy's shopping for Jamie's latest recipe must be mad, but then I see "fresh stock" has appeared in the supermarket's chiller cabinet, which means people are throwing away left-overs and then buying someone else's boiled up bones. Recession? Apparently not...

1 comment:

  1. we have loads of 'mushrooms' growing all around us, especially a type that grows in the forest(black forest) which is much loved here - personally i find them far too strongly flavoured - you have to be a bit careful about what you pick, but as my father in law says, "you can eat all mushrooms - once"

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