She Who Must Be Obeyed and I are both dedicated fungi fans. One of the attractions to going to Japan in the autumn is to eat dishes with maitake, shiitake or occasionally matsutake (the truffle equivalent of Japan) or some of the other varieties. E.g. the maitake soba and the assorted mushrom soup pictured below My in-laws live in deepest rural Japan and one advantage of living there is that my father-in-law regularly goes on matsutake hunts. Matsutake is hard to find, impossible (so far) to cultivate and has a very distinctive taste and aroma. Indeed one of my abiding pleasures was to open up a matsutake rice ball on a train and see how the aroma spread and tantalized all the other passengers.
However this year we're staying in Europe for the autumn so there will be no matsutake-gohan. Fortunately though that doesn't mean no mushrooms because the French are very keen on them too and hence the shops are filled with interesting mushrooms. We found some "Trompettes de la Mort" in the shop and decided that they would be suitable for a few dishes to satisfy our mushroom cravings. SWMBO made the Italian equivalent of matsutake-gohan - "risotto con funghi" last night based on a BBC recipe she found but with modifications I made omelettes. The astute observer will note that the two final editions are slightly different, that would be because we had two different omelettes on different days:
Oh and did I mention the Truffle cheese I picked up in Milan? no? well we've had some of that too. So we're mushroomed out until we go shopping tomorrow
Interestingly enough it turns out that "Trompettes de la mort" are apparently known in English as either "Black Trumpets" or "Horn of plenty" aka "Cornucopia" (their latin name). This is rather suitable as I have just bought and read Terry Pratchett's Wintersmith.
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