Lady Lunchalot

Autumn’s wet weather is the perfect time for mushrooms. Try buying mushrooms at a market or mushroom specialist - they have so much more flavour than the bland supermarket ones.

Mushrooms were once thought to be a food from heaven - and it’s not hard to see why. The mysterious overnight sprouting of wild mushrooms must have appeared as though it was a gift from the gods, and many cultures have treated them this way. Egyptian hieroglyphics dating back more than 4500 years tell us that only Egyptian royalty were allowed to eat them. Mushroom rituals have been held throughout history in parts of the world as diverse as Russia, China, Latin America, Greece and Mexico.

But the world had to remain content with wild mushrooms for another 3,700 years until Japanese farmers managed to cultivate shiitake and matsukame mushrooms. Europe didn’t taste its first homegrown mushroom until 1678 when the French discovered the fungus’s magical technique of reproduction which enabled mushrooms to be farmed in Europe.

Despite the advances made since the first mushroom was cultivated on European soil, cultivation of the most prized fungal species continues to elude fungus fans. The noble truffle, the undisputed king of mushrooms, has never been successfully farmed despite extensive experiments stretching from its native homeland of France to the furthest reaches of New Zealand.

Fungi facts

• More than 40,000 species of edible mushrooms grow throughout the planet, but only a fraction of these are sold in western supermarkets.
• Throughout history, popes and kings have been assassinated by eating poisonous mushrooms.
• Buddha died from eating a poisonous mushroom.
• Many cultures have eaten magic mushrooms, fungi that contain mind-altering chemicals, to achieve mystical insight. Other cultures just eat them to get stoned.
• Some primatologists claim that magic mushrooms could have provided the spark which led to the homo-erectus and homo sapiens evolving from the apes.
• The 5,300 year old “Ice-Man” discovered buried near the Austrian and Italian borders was carrying polypore mushrooms.

Veal with creamy mushroom sauce

This dish is delicious served with lightly steamed asparagus.

• 2 veal scallopines or escallopes
• 1 cup of sliced mushrooms
• 500 ml of cream (For a lighter dish substitute cream with 400g ricotta cheese and 100ml reduced fat milk– remember you will get a different texture)
• 3 cloves of garlic, finely chopped
• 1 small onion, finely chopped
• A tablespoon of butter or olive oil
• A pinch of salt

Pan fry veal on low heat until brown on both sides. In separate pan, sautee mushrooms, onion and garlic in butter or oil until mushrooms are soft. Add cream and salt and simmer on low heat for five minutes. Pour sauce over veal and simmer until veal is cooked.

This entry was posted on Wednesday, May 10th, 2006 at 4:45 am and is filed under Recipes, Food History . You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.