April/May is the start of the edible mushroom season after the long lay off for winter. I was out at the weekend picking St George Mushrooms, (Calocybe Gambosa) returning to a patch that I found a couple of years ago. St George mushrooms grow in rings that can be hundreds of years old so if you find a patch you have found a mushroom larder that will last a lifetime.
The St George Mushroom
St George mushrooms may be less well known than Morels the other spring mushroom. But they definitely rank amongst the best wild mushrooms, firm textured and well flavoured, reminiscent of earth and the woods. In France it’s known as le vrai mouserron, “the true mushroom”, and one big advantage over the famed Morel is that they are much easier to find!
I picked a scant kilo and returned triumphantly to chez nous. Half were used quickly and simply as mushrooms on toast, the remainder saved until the following night when they where cooked with reconstituted dried Ceps from my autumn harvest and roast hazelnuts as a garnish for a wild mushroom soup that I had previously made and froze back in November. An enjoyable taste of autumn on a cool spring evening.(Calocybe gambosa
[...] for St Georges mushrooms the subject of one of my earliest posts on this blog which can be found here. A quick hop in the car to my nearest mushroom site and I’m back home 10 minutes later with a [...]
Interestingly any mushroom that grows on the ground will eventually form rings. The classic fairy ring being the best known example. Also the mushrooms every year are likely to be genetically identical. They can live much longer that a couple of centuries. The oldest known example is estimated at 6000 years old and its technically that same individual fungus. So Colin your not that old yet and you can still get good stuff out of old things..