T’Gallant: mushroom foraging
I’m not a big fan of autumn, winter, grey skies, and rain. Every year, I eagerly wait for summer to arrive. But even I must admit that there are some positives to the cold, wet weather – one of them being wild mushrooms.
A couple of weeks ago, the Boys and I headed down to T’Gallant for a mushroom hunt. It had been raining heavily the night before and we showed up to find that almost everyone else had gumboots on. Uh oh! Were we going to be under prepared? Trust me, if we had owned a pair of gumboots, I would have brought them, but we live in Melbourne…. where it rarely rains for more than 30 minutes. So gumboots have always seemed like a stupid thing to buy. But maybe that’s just envy talking because everyone else was so prepared!
For the first part of the day, we spent an hour looking for mushrooms – specifically pine mushrooms / saffron milk-caps and slippery jacks. Our guide took us out of the winery, talking us through the characteristics of saffron milk-caps and slippery jacks. We walked up the road for about ten minutes, and then entered private property (under prior arrangement with the land owner). Fortunately, while there was a fair bit of mud, gumboots weren’t actually required – just careful footing so we didn’t go arse over t…. 🙂
Saffron milk-caps grow under pine trees, with which they have a mycorrhizal (symbiotic) association. They have a firm carrot orange cap, which is convex to vase shaped, a hollow stem, and when cut or bruised, they bleed a red-orange milk.
Slippery jacks have a slimy brown cap, with the underside being light-yellow and spongey. This particular one had deteriorated from age and insects – we found much better looking ones later on.
There were tons of mushrooms at this property – the autumn rains had obviously created the right conditions for the mushrooms to flourish. There were also plenty of toadstools too – poisonous unfortunately, but very pretty.
Obviously, you need to know what you’re doing when picking wild mushrooms. While I feel the session gave me an idea of what to look for regarding saffron milk caps and slippery jacks, I certainly wouldn’t go foraging for them myself without an educated guide or having an expert look over them. So – warning! At T’Gallant there were posters on the wall with pictures and descriptions of edible and poisonous fungi around the world. I was particularly intrigued by one mushroom that is very poisonous – but the symptoms of poisoning only show up 3-4 weeks after ingestion. And some toxic mushrooms can cause organ failure. Shudder!
When we had picked a basket’s worth of mushrooms, we headed back to the winery. Back at T-Gallant, we tasted some wines, and then sat down to a cooking demonstration and lunch, accompanied by two glasses of wine. (The price for the mushroom forage plus food and wine was $75pp.)
During our wine tasting, we had a little snack of mushroom pate on toasts with parmesan and balsamic vinegar. We were starving by this stage, so the little snack was very welcome!
After we had tasted the wines, we headed into the demonstration kitchen and were served a fantastic mushroom soup. It was a shame it was served in a paper cup because this was a soup to be savoured. It was thick and hearty, and packed with an intense mushroom flavour, probably helped by the fact that it was made with a generous amount of dried forest mushrooms as well as fresh mushrooms.
The mushrooms that had been picked in the morning were cleaned and then barbequed. I found them quite fleshy and meaty, with the Slippery Jacks having an interesting spongey texture.
After the soup, out came a mushroom and onion pizza. The mushrooms and onions had been sliced thinly and baked on top of a thin, crispy base.
This was a very simple salad topped with parmesan. It had a tangy, rather addictive
dressing.
We had a mushroom tarte tartin, made from a mixture of different mushrooms – button, small swiss brown and oyster, and puff pastry.
And our last savoury dish was a mushroom rigatoni with pine nuts and mascarpone. This was a simple dish cooked well. The pasta had a good meaty mushroom flavour, and the pine nuts gave a bit of crunchy and nuttiness.
And dessert was brown sugar meringues with ice cream – that were plated to look like mushrooms! Cute! The meringues had dark sugary notes similar to molasses/treacle, and the ice cream tasted a bit orangey, possibly due to orange blossom water? It was a sweet way of ending the afternoon, and also a creative way of dealing with the mushroom theme!
On the way out, we spotted the winery cat hanging out on a display shelf. It was a (much) slimmer version of one of our cats – awww.
We had a fun afternoon and I enjoyed both the mushroom hunting and the food back at the winery. Unfortunately we attended the last mushroom session for the year, but I believe they run them every year around May/June. They book out very quickly, so keep an eye out next year if you’re interested.
T’Gallant
1385 Mornington-Flinders Road
Main Ridge 3928
Phone: 03 5989 6565
Hannah
June 29, 2010 @ 9:36 pm
I'm not convinced. Where's the shiitake souffle? The porcini panacotta?
I think the chefs let the team down at the end of your lunch.
(And yes, I absolutely have eaten Vosges' dark chocolate with mushrooms and walnuts. Would you ever doubt me, Be Fri? KAPOW!)
Agnes
June 29, 2010 @ 9:41 pm
St Ends: You and I might eat shiitake souffle or porcini pannacotta, but I'm not sure everyone else would. Dessert was for the normal, non food obsessed people. Yes, apparently those kinds of people exist! Unbelievable, I know!
And I would never doubt you! What was the chocolate like?
Hannah
June 29, 2010 @ 9:57 pm
Next you're going to tell me that Santa Claus doesn't exist. I don't believe it!
Actually, it was one of the most disappointing chocolate bars I've had. It tasted nothing like mushrooms – just had a bit of grittiness to the texture that ostensibly from the fungi. It was a sad (pre-blog) day for wayfaring chocolate.
Agnes
June 29, 2010 @ 10:10 pm
Of course Santa Claus exists! Easter Bunny however…… had a name change to Stu.
(Wtf am I talking about? I hope you know because I have no idea.)
Hmmm, gritty chocolate. That is incredibly sad. Too bad it was pre-blog days!
penny aka jeroxie
June 29, 2010 @ 10:14 pm
Those mushrooms are huge! Looks like a fun day out. Next year! Should I get gum boots?
Agnes
June 29, 2010 @ 10:18 pm
Penny – yes! Get gum boots! You could be okay without, but it would've been nice to have them and just stroll through the puddles and mud without having to worry about falling over. And everyone else had them… we felt rather left out!
Hannah
June 29, 2010 @ 10:32 pm
The fact that I also have no idea, but still find your chatter highly entertaining, is why we're St Frys.
You know, it may have been pre-blog, but I obsessively took photos and notes even before the blog, so I might have to retrospectively post the mushroom chocolate! 😀
mademoiselle délicieuse
June 30, 2010 @ 12:18 am
Ooohhh, looks like a mushroom degustation! But yes, foraging is best performed with guidance.
redmenace
June 30, 2010 @ 4:18 am
I would say that foraging is a HUGE benefit to the colder weather! How lucky you are. I'm alway so scared to go out looking, but I will take your advice this coming year and use a guide. It looks like tons of fun!
Maria@TheGourmetChallenge
July 1, 2010 @ 10:54 am
oh my, its been a while since I've read your blog!! It looks like you had a fantastic day, and all those dish are making me hungry! Sigh. So quick note…..look for gumboots…..WE'RE GOING NEXT YEAR!!!!
Adrian @ Food Rehab
July 2, 2010 @ 10:29 pm
Looks like you had a ball with filling up that basket! Especially diggin the mushroom rigatoni- whoa!
But most of all- the kitty. Great ending.
Agnes
July 5, 2010 @ 9:25 pm
St Ends: You took photos and notes even before the blog? Don't tell me that you're the kind of person who writes in a journal every night? "Dear Diary. Today I ate mushroom chocolate. It was not nice. Love Hannah."
mademoiselle: How many ways can you cook a mushroom? Oh, about a thousand! 😀 Even though everything had mushrooms in it, I wasn't sick of mushrooms by the end of it, so that was a good sign!
redmenace: I am way too scared to go mushroom foraging on my own – not worth the risk, I think!
Maria: you need to go next year. You'll love it. (And yes, get gumboots.)
Adrian: Maybe I should finish every post with a photo of a cat!
Hannah
July 5, 2010 @ 10:03 pm
Dear Diary, today my Be Fry teased me. I might not invite her to my birthday party, and then she'll miss out on a lolly bag. Love, Hannah.
P.S. Actually, I never could keep up a diary. Everything I wrote seemed cringe-worthy, and cringe-worthy even at the time – I didn't need the hindsight of ten years later to know that 14yo crushes are silly…
Agnes
July 5, 2010 @ 10:18 pm
Hannah: Dear Diary. Today my Be Fri did something awesome. She is so cool. I want to be like her when I grow up. Love Hannah.
Speaking of diaries, it reminds that that several years ago I found a diary from when I was 17. (I wrote diaries occasionally when I was younger.) It was HORRIBLE reading through it. I had to rip it up, it was so cringey. At least you realised at the time that it was cringe-worthy!
Hannah
July 5, 2010 @ 10:41 pm
Dear Diary: Please stop keeping me in suspense and tell me what the awesome thing my Be Fri did was. Did it involved sending me chocolate from her city? Because that would be awesome. Love, Hannah.
P.S. See what I did there?
April @ My Food Trail
July 8, 2010 @ 3:34 pm
What a great day out it was! This reminds me I'll have to get my post up too!
I knew in advance it was going to be muddy so I went and specially bought a pair of gum boots. Only $10 but totally worth it! Much easier to clean mud off gum boots than shoes!
Agnes
July 14, 2010 @ 10:31 pm
April: Damn, you were one of those organised, prepared people! Grrrr to you! 😉 Looking forward to seeing your post on it!