Mushroom hunting.
As I have mentioned before here that when foraging mushrooms you will need to be 110% sure that the mushroom you are picking is edible, check and double check each time until you are sure yourself that what you pick is the right identification.
the best thing about facebook and Instagram is memories, a mushroom showed up on my memories this year from 2 years ago, I therefore went back to my spots in hope of finding said mushrooms again but to no avail. the 1st time I ever spotted these mushrooms was by pure chance, then again from the size of the mushroom I found you would think that it would have been hard to miss. measuring 1ft across at its widest point. Although edible in its smaller stages I found the larger ones better for drying and keeping for later in the year for stock and soup or gravy etc.
I hope this year, I am fortunate enough to go and collect small ones, I don’t expect to find them, I dehydrated most of what I picked last year and still have some left in my jar, Ive added more mushrooms dried to another jar to start a collection for this year, lets see where it goes.
I hope to identify more edible mushrooms, to add to my repertoire, as well as my jar of flavours. I will be posting these finds on my Instagram so I know what and where the mushrooms are. Im happy to share my finds as well as any info I find and my identifications.
As always stay safe and you can follow my hunting journeys on my Instagram @chefpaulc
Month: September 2021
David talks france
Irish food culture
After leaving and working outside of Ireland for a while now, I have discovered a few things about the perception of the Irish food culture.
1) We don’t have a bold rich historic food culture, so people are ignorant to our views and some of ours foods. (you try to compare dishes or explain similar ingredients and people just don’t want to know)
2) People think we belong to the UK (united kingdom), this really irritated me as Ireland has its own culture, and its own presence in the food world we certainly do not need to piggy back off the UK
3) Beer – so aside from being associated with the UK for food if you’re Irish while living abroad or associated with an Irish establishment, people straight away ask about beer and whiskey.
As I sit here at my desk writing these stereotype discoveries, I ask myself what I can do as a chef to showcase Irish food culture. The only solution for me at this moment is to cook even if just for one person at a time, if only just one person opens their mind and learns a little about a different culture then it’s all a success, as food is always enjoy therefore a culture never dies.