I ate korvasieni mushrooms and I'm still standing
I've had a busy week. I don't think that I've studied this intensively in a long time, certainly not for so many days in a row. So today I took it easy once I got back home and watched telly and One Piece.I've been too busy to bake anything, but I did eat a type of mushroom this past week that I've never tasted before. Mom had gotten korvasieniä (Gyromitra esculenta) from her co-worker who got them from her sister. Korvasienet are pecualiar because you find them in the Spring while all the other mushrooms that I know of are found in Autumn. Also, korvasienet are lethally poisonous, if eaten raw, so for God's sake don't eat them, if you don't know how to get the poison off first. This was the first time that we prepared these type of mushrooms so I checked for instructions (in Finnish) on the Finnish Food Safety Authority's website. To err on the side of caution we parboiled (ryöpätä) them three times for 10 minutes each time. You change the water each time and also run some water through the mushrooms (huuhtele ne). The gas from the korvasieni mushroom is also poisonous so we had to properly ventilate as well while parboiling them.
Are korvasienet in Finland like the fugu (pufferfish (pallokala)) of Japan? Eating fugu in a restaurant is probably more dangerous.
It's a lot of work to get the poison off the korvasieni mushrooms, but they were delicious. Mom cooked them with some chopped onions and cream. We ate the stew with boiled potatoes and some fried Norwegian Salmon. It was the best meal that I've had in a while. Korvasienet have their own unique taste. Well all the mushrooms that I'm familiar with taste different. So if you say that you don't like mushrooms, it's like saying that you don't like vegetables because you tasted carrots once and didn't like them.
The white table mushrooms (herkkusienet) that you can buy also canned have to be the blandest tasting mushroom that I know of. Shiitake (siitake) mushrooms that you can also buy from some stores here have a little more taste, but those are also pretty bland compared to the really good mushrooms that you can find in Finnish forests. Chanterelle (kanttarelli) is the first one that I learned to pick and they're good for sauces. Boletaceaes (tatit) are also good, but I'm not confident in my ability to identify them in the wild as of yet. Besides chantarelle I can also identify Cantharellus tubaeformis (suppilovahvero), which taste awesome as a soup, and craterellus mushrooms (mustatorvisieni), which has a lot of taste, but you only find them rarely. We have craterellus as dried and we use them kind of like a spice, to get a nice mushroom taste to a dish. Now I can also add korvasieni to the list of mushrooms that I can identify in the wild (they look like brains). ^^; Until now I had just known that korvasienet were poisonous, but I'd pick them now, if I came across them. They tasted that good when properly prepared. Even if it was a lot of work to get the poison out of the mushrooms.
Are korvasienet in Finland like the fugu (pufferfish (pallokala)) of Japan? Eating fugu in a restaurant is probably more dangerous.
It's a lot of work to get the poison off the korvasieni mushrooms, but they were delicious. Mom cooked them with some chopped onions and cream. We ate the stew with boiled potatoes and some fried Norwegian Salmon. It was the best meal that I've had in a while. Korvasienet have their own unique taste. Well all the mushrooms that I'm familiar with taste different. So if you say that you don't like mushrooms, it's like saying that you don't like vegetables because you tasted carrots once and didn't like them.
The white table mushrooms (herkkusienet) that you can buy also canned have to be the blandest tasting mushroom that I know of. Shiitake (siitake) mushrooms that you can also buy from some stores here have a little more taste, but those are also pretty bland compared to the really good mushrooms that you can find in Finnish forests. Chanterelle (kanttarelli) is the first one that I learned to pick and they're good for sauces. Boletaceaes (tatit) are also good, but I'm not confident in my ability to identify them in the wild as of yet. Besides chantarelle I can also identify Cantharellus tubaeformis (suppilovahvero), which taste awesome as a soup, and craterellus mushrooms (mustatorvisieni), which has a lot of taste, but you only find them rarely. We have craterellus as dried and we use them kind of like a spice, to get a nice mushroom taste to a dish. Now I can also add korvasieni to the list of mushrooms that I can identify in the wild (they look like brains). ^^; Until now I had just known that korvasienet were poisonous, but I'd pick them now, if I came across them. They tasted that good when properly prepared. Even if it was a lot of work to get the poison out of the mushrooms.