Colourful mushroom BBQ

Ingredients (note the psychedelic
colours)

When people ask me, do I ever get tired of eating mushrooms, I always answer in the negative. After all, my reputation of an extreme fungi lover is at stake here. However, I have to admit that there are times at the height of wild mushroom season when things are getting a bit overwhelming. I do my best to preserve the collected mushrooms for later by freezing and drying, but only ceps can take it without significant deterioration of taste and texture, and there are so many other kinds that make it into my basket. I just can't resist them!

So, after about a month of frying, stewing and roasting comes a time when even a seasoned fungi eater like myself thinks, there really can be such a thing as too many mushrooms.

Observe the toxins coming out

And what do I do then? I start grilling them! After all, with the summer almost over, it's a perfect excuse to take out the bbq tools one last time. Thus, without any further ado, behold the recipe.

Ingredients:

• 500g of firm fleshy mushrooms. I used orange birch boletes and scarletina boletes but for less extreme experiences chestnut mushrooms from a local supermarket will do fine. If using the latter, just disregard the boiling instructions as this is unnecessary.
• 1 red pepper
• 1 eggplant
• 1 onion (optional)
• olive oil, salt

Process:

Frying, to add that bit of extra flavour

Cut the wild mushrooms into bbq-sized pieces, or if using chestnut mushrooms, remove stalks and leave caps whole. Boil water with some salt, add the mushrooms, boil for 5 minutes, drain. Repeat, this time for 10 minutes. This is necessary to remove the toxins from orange birch boletes and scarletina boletes. Not that these are particularly dangerous, but we don't want any stomach upsets, right? As stated above, this step is unnecessary for supermarket mushrooms.

Heat some olive oil in a frying pan, add the mushroom pieces and fry until golden on both sides. Cut the aubergine into square pieces and fry it, too. Cut the red pepper into square pieces and leave it raw. Slice the onion to make some rings (only if you like it)

Put the mushrooms, aubergines, onions and peppers onto skewers. Place over medium-hot grill (I did this once the meat that I had for the evening was cooked), turning frequently until peppers start withering.

And... you are done. Serve with the sauce of your choice!

A little bit more, and they'll be ready to serve!