Chanterelle and samphire salad

As every successful mushroom hunter knows, while collecting it is important to stay attuned to the spirit world and keep your thoughts proper (i.e., fungi-directed). Letting your mind wander results in stopping finding wild food and becoming food to bloodsucking insects instead.

There is a very thin line indeed between a mushroom gatherer and a patient with obsessive-compulsive disorder. In fact, you almost need to have the latter to be any good at fungi foraging. Attunement to forest spirits must be kept in check, too, or there is a very real danger of your doctor insisting you need hefty doses of haloperidol, or whatever they use to treat psychotic patients these days.

In short: it's the edge of a blade. Tread with caution.

However, when within the space of a few hours I see an article in a newspaper with chanterelle and exotic weed recipe, then find just the right quantity of chanterelles, and finally see that same exotic weed in the supermarket, it must mean something, right? The Universe is definitely trying to tell me that I must cook it, and therefore I obey.

The ingredients

Ingredients:

• 50g of pancetta 
• some olive oil 
• 250g chanterelles
• 100g of samphire 
• Salt, pepper

Process:

Prepare the chanterelles. In an ideal world, it is sufficient to wipe them with a damp cloth, but in reality chanterelles come covered in sand, twigs and slug poo, so I do have to wash them. Putting them on a kitchen towel removes some of the moisture, but still not enough. The original recipe says, cook pancetta first, then add chanterelles, but if the chanterelles need to be washed, I recommend to amend the sequence. Thus, cook the chanterelles in a little olive oil on medium high heat until the liquid has evaporated, then remove them from the pan, cook the pancetta until it releases its fat, return the chanterelles to the pan, add salt and pepper, and after 2-3 minutes add the samphire. One more minute, stirring constantly, and you are done!

I quite liked the combination of pancetta and chanterelles, but not so sure about samphire: it's too salty, and it tastes like seaweed. Maybe next time I'll replace it with something else and see if it makes the dish more edible. Universe, you know what? You were wrong! 

Looks better than it tastes, but maybe it'll find its fans.