Last summer, I intended for PhilaPhood to go on tour to Latvia. Unfortunately, our production team forgot to pack the camera, so I decided to spare everyone entries created with fuzzy iPhone pics (from an older model iPhone, at that). This summer, we are equipped with a new camera, and ready to fill you in on what philadelphians eat in Latviphilla. 

    Phor a start: mushrooms.

    By the time we arrive here each year in early June, the woods are already filled with chanterelles, which bear the lovely name “lisichki” in Russian—meaning something like “little foxes,” presumably because their color is a fox-like yellowish-orange. They also tend to hide in the underbrush like tiny predators. Except that, whether they know it or not, they are the prey, not than the hunters. 

    Later in the summer, time and energy willing, I’ll post a couple more mushroom entries—to reflect the appearance in the forests of what Russians think of as “real” mushrooms: the boleti (including the prized king boletus—maybe we’ll be lucky enough to find some this year). 

     A little more about gathering mushrooms: the ones shown here were 2/3 collected by D., P., K. and I in the woods near Plienciems—a little fishing village about an hour from Riga by car to which our friends first brought us years ago. The best woods for mushrooms are clear and breezy, lacking almost all underbrush, apart from blueberry bushes (providing a welcome distraction from mushrooms) and moss. It’s unbelievably beautiful—with sunlight piercing the canopy and creating a dappled light on the forest floor.

    Chanterelles often poke up through the moss, but are usually mostly concealed and hard to spot. They almost always occur in little “families”—groups of three or four or ten—and often you’ll find neighboring groups not far away if you chance upon one such “family.” Sometimes they are arranged in a line that might follow the line of a decaying branch under the moss. Make sure that your basket doesn’t have holes in it, and always cut the mushroom off at the stem (as far down as you can reach), leaving the roots in place to propagate new mushrooms. 

    “Real” mushroom hunters (which in Latvia includes a lot of people who supplement their income selling mushrooms on the roadsides—that’s where the other 1/3 of our haul came from) get up at the crack of dawn and head into the woods, filled with a competitive spirit, to special spots that they keep secret even from their closest friends. We, on the other hand, roll out of bed at 10:30am and make it to the woods in the early afternoon, if we are lucky. Nevertheless, we always seem to be able to find enough mushrooms for a meal. Yesterday, in addition to a good haul of chanterelles, we also gathered a few russala, called “syroeshki” in Russian (see PhilaPhorage I). The one on the picture is big and lovely, but was full of worms, so we didn’t take it. We only gather the young ones that the worms haven’t gotten to yet. For some wonderful reason, worms never infest chanterelles.

    Once you’ve got the mushrooms home, you have to wash them to get the dirt and bits of leaves and moss off, otherwise you get a mouthful of grit when you eat. I’ve seen some people wash them in a colander under running water, but in my experience the mushrooms soak up so much water that way that they end up swimming in liquid when you try to sauté them. I prefer to rinse them quickly, one by one, shaking off the excess water as I go. I always tear apart the big ones with my fingers longitudinally and leave the little ones whole, on the theory that every piece of mushroom should end up still looking like a piece of mushroom.

       When it comes to cooking them, I almost always deal with mushrooms in the same way: sauteing with some sort of aromatic. Then if I have the culinary gumption, I can bake the cooked mushrooms into a pie—I’ll describe that in the next entry. This time, I started with an onion in olive oil (there are delicious fresh onions in the markets here). I also love to cook them with leeks, but they haven’t been available yet this year. Then I add the mushrooms with a little salt, to help them to give up their liquid. Once they have softened and their liquid has been cooked off, I let them fry a little, then add in a splash of soy sauce, a little black pepper, and some wine to finish. 

    Now, basically, they are done and ready to be served with boiled new potatoes or pasta. Last night, when we ate these, we had both, since D. and P. demanded pasta, while K. and I prefer potatoes. Concerning the pie route: stay tuned.