Les Coulemelles : Parasol Mushrooms

After some cool weather and rain, I slipped out one morning when the sun was shining, carrying a little basket with the intent to go and check the chanterelle patch we found last year. I decided on a detour at first, down to the river. There on a shelf of the old wall that sections the forest from the meadow, under an ash tree, I saw two fresh looking parasols. I scrambled up to gather them, and although they weren’t as big as the one Loic found the day before, I decided to take them. On the way back, I ran into a couple from Paris that owns the house ‘La Marjolaine’ and the lady looked in my basket. “Oh look, you’ve found some coulemelles (that's the French word for parasol mushrooms). But they look a little small.” I remembered the three criteria that Loic had been using to identify these mushrooms. One was the nipple on top, the second the easily movable upward oriented skirt, and third was the fact that the bulb-like bottoms were not nestled into any kind of volva. I was sure about it, but when she said that they seemed small, I paused.

When I returned home, Loic was still in the kitchen by the warm stove with a cup of coffee, surrounded by the stacks of mushroom atlases. I showed him my pickings and he immediately said we would have to check them more carefully. What? He was so sure the day before when we'd found an old one behind the house. I told him to come out of the dark and we sat down at the picnic table with the books. Now how is it that you were so sure yesterday and today you’re not sure about these ones I have found? He opened up one of the guides and showed me a photo of some mushrooms that looked almost identical to the ones I had found, and next to it was written “mortel” with a skull and crossed bones. The only difference between the parasol and this mortally poisonous mushroom is the size.

That was enough for me. We have a little baby who needs us to stay alive. There’s no way, especially after the woman in the hamlet below had remarked on their size, that we were going to touch them. I picked them, I could decide. But Loic had begun to cross reference the other books and atlases, still examining them. He was hemming and hawing over them, and I began to lose my patience. I'd left curiosity behind and sensed the rush of adrenaline that comes with a brush with mortally poisonous mushrooms.

He was approaching the issue with a detached scientific curiosity. Nothing could hurt in continuing to examine them, right? Then, he changed his mind. “Yes, it’s sure. Let’s eat them.” He turned to another guide and then said, “no, wait a minute” and read silently for a while. He was going back and forth like that and there I was staring at these mushrooms in front of me at the table. Finally I just lost it. I don’t really know what got into me. I picked them up and crushed them in my hands like they were pieces of corn bread while he made a guttural "ack, ack" sort of noise. Done. I tossed them over the electric fence into the neighboring pasture. He was stunned at first, then he got mad.

I stood my ground. We should not even consider the prospect of eating a mushroom if there is any possible chance it could be confused with a mortally poisonous one. He says that the guides give a limit of 6 cms, and these measured 8.3. A wide margin in a scientist's mind, especially for one who measures in nanometers for a living. For me, that means about an inch from a blind precipice. Gustatory pleasure, or death? What will it be? Sorry. I will not go that close. I got the impression that he was trying to convince himself to eat them. He was picking and choosing supporting reasons, and completely ignoring the one aspect that could make the difference. He gets mad every time I bring it up. He won’t back down. He says that they were edible.

It won’t destroy our marriage although it stung for a few minutes. I told him that in retrospect it reveals one thing: we have different thresholds for excitement. There is a margin, albeit small, within which he is invigorated, he considers it exciting to explore. At the same time that same margin for me is a danger zone. Flirting with disaster, even rhetorically, is inviting it as far as I can see. This did not make him happy. He quickly retorted that it wasn’t excitement that made him declare them edible, it was just the facts. For me, there is a point at which my motherly instinct kicks in and I will strike. There’s a point where things turn to black and white, yes or no, and I won’t even entertain a maybe. This was one of those cases. I’m a little superstitious. I don’t feel comfortable tempting the gods, or witches, or hobgoblins, testosterone, anything that could inject that little nudge to go ahead when it could go either way. We were very close. In fact I was convinced it was fine to eat them for a little while.

We went out as a family that afternoon for a walk. We decided to take a country road that goes up to a pretty pasture with a view of the valley. The baby loved it. We've found that the jogging stroller is really great on rural paths with its dirt bike wheels and huge shocks. The people of the hamlets we passed through all made a big hullabaloo about it because they don’t sell these kinds of strollers in France.

On the route home by chance, the baby and I were walking ahead while Loic trailed behind identifying trees. Some happily large parasol mushrooms towered majestically at the edge of the field in the sun. I could not believe my eyes. I didn't make a move. I looked back at Loic who was staring intently at a rotting log.

"I love the way the sun falls across this field at this time of day." I said, and turned to walk towards the woods we'd have to cross to get home. Behind me, a couple of minutes later, I heard Loic's "Ho ho!" and for some reason I felt the spirit of my father at that moment. If he is out there, up there, he put those good mushrooms out for us, for Loic to gather. They patched things over. They took the regret out of losing the others, made us forget our disagreement. John Sellers was standing right there with me, in any case, while Loic tended to a hickory log fire in the fire pit outside and I prepared them for grilling.

I brushed the caps off carefully, all very fresh clean specimens. Gills up, I drizzled them with my best green olive oil and seasoned them lightly with salt, pepper, and just a touch of very good fresh chopped garlic. Roasted over mature hot hickory coals, they were flipped only after about 45 seconds on each side, enough to get them sizzling and start to brown. I wedged the grilled caps into four, and served them to an invited guest from our hamlet and Loic on toasted country bread. Flavorful, tender, juicy, a buoyant surprise of excellent flavor, in fact I can easily say it was the best mushroom eating experience I have had so far in my life.

Up High - Les Myrtilles Sauvages

A retreat. Long slow walks disconnected from the hum of anything. Cool air punctuating grey-blue stone and moving the greenery, we stand still in the Alps. A great way to allow things to gel and mix in the mind. Old fashioned pages coming out double spaced and indented, spending time allowing the mind's eye to wander instead of shining like a spot on what comes next. Edits, reflection on how to improve, work on technical issues I have been saving for a rainy day, these things all come into play during a retreat. That, and I read four books.

Last year, when the baby was about 6 months old, we packed him into the backpack carrier, and headed out for a promenade. On the trail that day, I wanted to take the hard slope. Something inside me yearned to climb something steep. I had some things to think about. One was this fear, fear about motherhood I could not seem to shake. It made me feel like an ingrate. I had lost this fleeting dream over years with many losses. Then we quietly plodded through nearly 5 years of files and scrutiny and dreams of being adoptive parents, and now we had our perfect beautiful son, and here it came, this crazy fear of being a mother. What was wrong with me?

It took hours, but we made it. When we finally broke through the tree line, we turned by a kind of accident and found ourselves circling the edge of a sunny shelf. It began with summer yellowed knee-high grass that quickly turned into a forest of low bushes, a thick wild blueberry patch positioned just so under the sun.

We'd spent a long time climbing already and it was time to feed the baby. We needed a place to sit. The wild blueberries growing in this patch were the plumpest and darkest I had ever seen, though. They left stains on my legs. They hung like grapes from the vine they were so thickly covering each bush. Squeezing one, it spurted startling blood red juice. I had never tasted a more flavorful berry. We had to turn away from this place, but I made an inner vow to myself to return.

Throughout the coming seasons, I anticipated going back. A lush wild blueberry patch borne of inspired labor took mythical proportions in my mind. It slowly transformed into a mission. One whole year went by, one year to ripen. While we planned for our mountain guests this summer, I was transfixed by the idea of these blueberries. I wondered how to convince my visiting friends and their children to take that hard uphill trail. If we took little steps, walking ever so slow to reach the top? If we stopped for dozens of water breaks? If I told a long story along the way? How long would it take with children? I wanted so badly to tackle it again. But no matter how I turned it around in my mind, I knew that it was just not a good idea to spring such a hard walk on unsuspecting guests.

Our first guests came and we headed out on an easy excursion to give them a sweet taste of Alpine promenades. We had chosen one that began high and wrapped along the edges and twisted around corners to reveal panoramic vistas, where every footstep counts. One where we could start out at a good altitude to give them a sample of the unique flora and open sky that higher hiking can provide without too much of the hardship of constant climbing. The kind of well worn paths that entice at every turn. At one point, we ran into a couple that was bent down gathering something. The woman had a pail and a curious contraption, a little rake. Were there blueberries? You betcha! Not so plentiful, not so plump, but blueberries nonetheless.

The next time we took that hike with my old childhood friend and her two girls, the children were equipped with pails and a rake of their own. After a picnic lunch, they went off the path, scrambling up the sunny side with their extraordinary energy, up perilously steep inclines to reach yet another blueberry bush. We called after them to slow down, to be careful, but they wouldn't listen, and we eventually all followed them.

We reached a grassy plateau. I let the baby walk, a corner of my scarf tied around his chest to make sure he didn't dash off in the wrong direction. He toddled on the flat ground, laughing along the way, proud of himself for hiking. I found myself turning, searching the horizon. Looking along the crests, naming them by their village nicknames, looking for the crook along jagged cat's tooth where I knew the berries I'd been dreaming of grew.

We had a game. "One, two, three... Fly!" I lifted him up above my head and he spread his arms wide and arched his back, seemingly above the mountain horizon. I made the low whistle of a high wind while he floated in my hands, and he reached out to the sky. My heart whisked us together to the mythical blueberry patch. There we were on top of the world. I laughed when I realized it, the fear is gone.

The children and my friend had made good progress. One pail was nearly half way full. This is plenty. We will make a tarte aux myrtilles, I tell them.

Recipe: Kitchen Table Tarte aux Myrtilles

1 batch of your favorite pâte brisée
Enough wild blueberries to cover the bottom or as much to fill a pie tin
3/4 to 1 1/2 cups white sugar
a medium to hot oven

A French kitchen table tarte is one that has no precise measurements. You can make this kind of tarte with any berry or fruit you have. It consists of fruit, sugar, and pie crust, very simple.

Sort the wild blueberries, to remove any sticks or twigs or unripe berries. Wash the good ones thoroughly and let them dry. Taste the berries to see how much they need to be sweetened. Roll the prepared dough out to cover the bottom and sides of the pie tin and pierce the bottom with a fork. Fill it with fruit, even a thin layer will do. Sprinkle the sugar evenly over the top and bake it for 20-30 minutes, until the sugar and berries bubble, and the pastry is golden brown. If you've got a lot of blueberries and want make a thicker deeper tarte, you can use the kind of sugar that has apple pectin added, the kind they sell to make jams with. That way, when the tarte cools down the filling is less runny. Cook it in a cooler oven, for twice the time, the first 45 minutes covered with tin foil to keep the crust from burning. When it's bubbling all the way to the middle, take the foil off and raise the temperature in the oven to brown it.

Côte d'Azur: Piccata de Veau à la Poutargue

On the Côte d'Azur, we escape to our secret beach before the cicadas begin to hum. Morning shadows still long, cedars on the hill protect the little harbor from the sun. The sun is piercing through in spots along the shore and we settle down. The water is so crystal clear we can see the fish swimming among the rocks.

Back at the house, Brigitte is rolling out veal escalopes in her cool Mediterranean tiled kitchen, lights off, shade down. She’s got some poutargue. She’s working her way along each flattened escalope with a sharp knife, slicing each one into smaller strips, getting ready to sear them.



“Elle est bonne” we hear, from the early morning regulars, arriving with their papers, their bamboo mats, silently moving their summer browned bodies into the flat sea, sliding gently in until their heads are the only thing left on the surface of the water. They hover and meditate, some swim to the buoy. There is no further discussion. “Elle est bonne”.

She’s begun mincing shallots on her mother Mamy Durandeau’s old wood board, the one she salvaged when the house was put up for sale. So many memories sliced and minced into an old wood board. We look up to the hill, shading our eyes, and see Mamy’s empty house hovering in a perfumed cloud of sun toasted cedars and flowering trees. In her kitchen, Brigitte simmers the minced shallots with sour things, reducing it down, tossing the pan now and then, humming something.



The first sound of the cicadas strikes like a lullaby in full swing, tempering the sharp joyous cries of the first arriving children. The baby rests his head on my salty chest, nestling his goose pimpled legs into the crook of my arm. It is time to go. He floated on his back today, he dunked under. The waves make a rhythm, the cicadas call in harmony with the rising temperature, their fervor beginning a story of a marathon day to come. Loic closes the parasol.

The shallots are sizzling now. The liquid has reduced. Brigitte has scraped the zest from a lemon, she has curled the clean leaves of a bouquet of basil and sliced it into fine chiffonade. Tart simmered shallots, slivered lemon zest, basil, and plump raisins are tossed together in a bowl and she puts it away. She unwraps the hard waxed poutargue to let it breathe. She will use it all. A breeze enters the kitchen. We are soothed by the cool tile in the house again when we leave our shoes at the door. Barefoot, we join the group that has assembled at the table, glasses of local rosé all around.



Recipe: A Cool Piccata de Veau à la Poutargue.

For 4 people. This recipe can be fully prepared in advance as its three elements and assembled quickly for guests. It is delicious as a summer cold dish. Prepare each element separately and refrigerate until your guests arrive, then let it warm up slightly to allow the flavors to all come through before assembling the plates or the whole on a pretty platter.

4 veal escalopes, sliced thin.
50 grams of poutargue, aka bottargo or bottarga
1 organic lemon
50 grams yellow raisins
2 good sized shallots
1/4 cup white wine vinegar
1/4 cup rosé wine
1 small bouquet of basil, about 15 large leaves
1 tablespoon olive oil
white pepper

For the sauce:

2 tablespoons of walnut oil
¼ cup beef stock, reduced to 1 tablespoon
1 tablespoon sherry vinegar
Salt and white pepper
200 grams of arugula, washed and dried for final serving

What is poutargue, bottargo, bottarga? It is salt preserved roe of mullet or tuna, a Mediterranean specialty. It is produced from the bluefin tuna or grey mullet in Italy, France, North African countries, Turkey, Spain and Greece. The swollen orange egg sacs are removed in-tact from the fish, and conditioned for long conservation in sea salt. Poutargue is traditionally enveloped in wax, but also can be found packed shrink wrapped (sous-vide). It is ready to eat and doesn’t need cooking.

- Pound the veal escalopes thin. Cut them across the grain into strips, about 1 ½ inches by 3 inches. Reserve in the refrigerator.

- Peel and mince the shallots, and heat them in a pan with the white wine vinegar and wine, bringing to a boil. Reduce slowly over medium heat until the liquid is fully reduced. Reserve.

- Remove the lemon zest and sliver it into thin strips with a sharp knife. Remove the basil leaves from the plant, wash them, roll them into a cigar shape and slice crosswise very thinly, to produce a thin chiffonade. Mix the cooked shallots, lemon zest, basil, yellow raisins, and white pepper together in a bowl. Remove the wax from the outside of the part of the poutargue you plan to use. Slice thinly.

- Prepare the sauce: in a bowl, whisk the sherry vinegar, walnut oil, reduced veal or beef stock, and season with salt and white pepper. (this dish can be prepared in advance to this point, and cooked and assembled 5 minutes before serving.)

- Heat up a cast iron grill or a plancha. Brush the veal pieces with olive oil, and season lightly with salt. Grill quickly on the hot grill, turning the piccatas after a few seconds to brown each side. Plate them directly on the serving plates on a bed of fresh arugula, sprinkling the shallot basil raisin and lemon condiment, a generous topping of slices of poutargue, and finally the sauce.

The wine you choose for this dish should not only go well with the warm meaty flavor of the veal, but also stand up to the counterpoint from the acidic condiment and briny poutargue. A fruity Chenin blanc or a red wine dominated more by its vivacity rather than tannins would do nicely.

This post originally published at Apartment Therapy, a guest post for their 2010 Summer Escapes series.