Even as a little girl I liked to pick mushrooms. We used to go to the edge of the forest to the Matěják pond and bring home baskets full of chanterelles, which, by the way, is one of the tastiest mushrooms. Or we collected champignons and young puffballs in the meadows where family villas and block of flats stand today.
I remember the taste of cutlets from bedel’s hats, salted strips of cheese roasted on the plates of the stove, or the delicacy of meatballs, reminiscent of pork. For fried eggs, mushroom sauce, mushroom friko or risotto, grilled mushrooms… And pickled mushrooms were just a delicacy.
But as I discovered during my travels around the world, our passion for mushroom picking is not shared abroad. In Canada or America, housewives preferred to buy a bag of artificially grown mushrooms, although I saw a lot of edible mushrooms in the meadows and forests there.
A friend who went to assemblies in neighboring states told how he became the most popular member of the party because he cooked mushroom dishes for his colleagues. I’m also reminded of the saffron plantations in Australia that no one picked…
Today, thanks to the inclusion of international cuisines in our menu, even exotic dishes with foreign mushrooms can reach our table, but nothing can replace such a creamy mushroom with a fluffy bun dumpling.
