These days, it’s fashionable to get deliveries of vegetable boxes. Some do it through devotion to the dour idol of seasonality; the true worshipper knows they are buying a challenge. Many great recipes are created to deal with gluts and shortages. Digby Anderson, in his wonderful Spectator food column, pointed out that every good kitchen runs on the solera system. Cooking with what one has, rather than going out and getting what one wants, provides some useful lessons.
Foraging for mushrooms is the best lesson of all. The result is both a challenge and, if you’re lucky, a glut too. Beneath every fallen leaf or umbral shadow lies possibility; one walks in hope and arrives, occasionally, in a state of grace.
Gorbachev, in a letter to the restaurateur Antonio Carluccio, said Russians referred to mushrooming as ‘the quiet hunt’.
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