GK wrote:
[i]"The True Mushroom
St Georges may be less well known than ceps, girolles or morels, but they definitely rank amongst the finest wild mushrooms, with a firm texture, appealing mealy smell and distinctive flavour, reminiscent of soil and wood smoke. In France it’s known as le vrai mouserron, “the true mushroom”.
Cooking St George’s Mushrooms
They’ve an affinity with chicken and eggs, as well as those other seasonal Spring delicacies, asparagus and hop shoots. It’s hard to beat a simple but exquisite St George and asparagus omelette. (Or use them in just about any mushroom recipe.)
Where They Grow
St Georges grow in a wide variety of habitats, from woodland to pasture, but are particularly fond of chalk grassland. I’ve found them on sites as various as London’s Hyde Park, Salisbury Plain, Newmarket Heath and on Suffolk lawns and commons.
Besides their sublime flavour, St Georges have the great advantage of growing in quantity. They often form rings in grassland, the subterranean fungal body growing from a central point and sending up its fruiting bodies (the mushrooms that spread the spores) around the perimeter each year.
Rings can be of almost any size - I’ve seen them from a hand’s span to several dozen metres across. There are rumours of giant rings half a mile wide or more! A good sized ring can produce several kilos of mushrooms.
The rings - of yellowing and darker grass together - are often clearly visible from a distance and a helpful guide to the location of the mushrooms. Up close they can be completely hidden under long grass - as an Italian mushroom hunter once told me, you need eyes on the ends of your fingers to find them.
Identification
As with all wild mushrooms, be absolutely sure of a positive identification before eating anything. St Georges can be confused with poisonous
I had a lovely omelette last night, St Georges, a little garlic and chilli, seasoning, fresh salad, crusty bread and a glass of homebrew. St Georges are called just that because they appear around St Georges day, you wont find them at any other time of the year- this aids identification.
Remember- If you are not absolutely sure, leave them well alone!!!
Many many thanks GK, The 1st image is a dead ringer for the few that I have peeking out of the grass, although mine are more silvery in the light, with only a slight beige hue here and there on the cap. Shall I leave them to build up the spores in that area ? I may do just that, and in the meantime, I shall get a definitive ID on them.
Thank you once again
Great pictures of fungus, the old golden plum - a Victorian tree had a custard fungus on the main trunk in the shape of clams for two years (I would remove it each year to try and save the tree) before the main part of the tree came down in gales two years ago. The core of the tree had turned a mahogany colour and whatever fungus had taken over this old girl, had turned the core wood into cubic pieces, so that it was brittle and broke up like a car wind screen as soon as it started swaying in the south westerlies.
My dear Misses use to make the homebrew, and I'd do the dry hopping with Fuggles flowers and the battonage and fining and syphoning and racking. One year when we were warming up for the Reading CAMRA festival. We started off here with some saved 2 year old that was lurking in the larder in old cyder quarts - the black screw and rubber flange kind.....a style long gone, and after consuming them - we never went further than the back garden to lounge in some deck chairs, that I'd bought years before at an auction in Skegness. I dont know
Just a tad lethal that stuff.
The Mangetout have just burst through - everything is set faire - now to say one's prayers, in what ever way works for you.
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. I have tried to ban my Misses from buying it in the Winter.
) Also have a St Halletts Poachers Blend to have another go at now I'm not all bunged up like the last time I tried it.
- Her Star notes endorse exactly the same charateristics with PN as I look for - so I will look out for this Chilean pinot, made in the burgundy style, which will NOW be twice the amount that GK paid. I always mature PN if it is possible, and IMHO has potential, that way I get a little closer to the dimensions that I crave. 