Post:To Viet
Later, when I went to study abroad in France, I loved autumn with its quiet autumn forest filled with yellow leaves, with only a few magpies wandering around looking for food on the carpet of leaves, or a few brown squirrels looking for chestnuts that had fallen on the paths. Autumn is the season for walks in the forest, mushroom picking, organizing trips to mountain villages by VTT bicycle, climbing mountains, picnicking in the middle of nature... Of all the above activities, I still remember the memories of mushroom picking in the forest the most.
Nice, the city where I live, is less than 30 km from the famous mushroom forests of the Luceram-Peira Cava pass, about 70 km from Lantosque and about 120 km from Turini. Every year around the end of August and the beginning of September, with the occasional night rain, mushrooms compete to grow and flourish under the carpet of rotting leaves. There are some good mushrooms, but most are still poisonous. Therefore, every time we go mushroom picking, we always bring along the Larousse Mushroom Dictionary to compare the edible mushroom images with the ones we have picked. This may sound unbelievable, but there have been many people who have had to go to the emergency room because of eating poisonous mushrooms, and some have even died from eating the poisonous Amanites Phalloïdes mushroom.
To prepare for the mushroom picking trip on the Turini Pass early on Saturday or Sunday morning, we got up at 4am. Our good friend Bernard from La Colle-sur-Loup picked us up at exactly 4:30am. The trunk of the Land Rover was filled with baskets of mushrooms, snacks: sausages, cheese and a few bottles of red Côtes du Rhône or pink Côtes de Provence wine. The baskets of mushrooms were lined with newspaper. Bernard said that we absolutely should not use plastic bags because the mushrooms would rot very quickly. We planned to buy bread on the way, because bread made in the mountain villages is always better than bread in the city. It is said that, like beer, pure water is one of the factors that make bread delicious.
After more than an hour, we stopped at a mountain town called Lantosque, about 70 km from Nice. The new town is located at an altitude of more than 1,000 m above sea level, on a rocky outcrop overlooking streams and deep ravines. The old town was next to a large lake, but was destroyed by an earthquake in the Middle Ages. It was still dark, and the sound of rushing water from the deep ravine could be heard. Only one bakery was open. The baker was surprised to see a group of Asians up the mountain so early, but he was happy to let us in through the back door and personally picked out for us croissants, pain au chocolat and two warm baguettes.
After about an hour of driving, we reached the top of the Turini Pass. The sun was slowly rising over the horizon, casting its rays over the autumn forest with its golden and red leaves, which was truly spectacular. However, after only a few hundred meters into the forest, the sunlight was blocked by the shade of the big trees and swarms of mosquitoes were attacking us.
The excitement of finding our first edible mushrooms made us forget about the bushes, thorns and flies. Luckily for us, there are not many snakes in Europe, occasionally I saw a venomous European viper about 20cm long sunbathing on a rock, but when it heard footsteps approaching, it quickly disappeared into the grass at the foot of the rock.
After picking mushrooms for a long time, I learned that Sanguin mushrooms usually grow along dry stream beds because that is the wettest place. Usually, the Sanguin mushrooms I pick are the most numerous, and that is also the type of mushroom I like to stir-fry with potatoes and persil leaves. Rarer still, Cepe mushrooms grow under carpets of rotten pine needles. When picking this type of mushroom, we have to carefully use an Opinel knife to dig around the base of the mushroom and then dig up the whole plant, instead of using a knife to cut off the stem like other types of mushrooms. It is said that if the stem of the Cepe mushroom is cut off, bacteria will eat the remaining stem and roots, as well as the Cepe mushroom population growing around it.
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There are dozens of different types of mushrooms in the forest, but most of them are inedible. Therefore, mushroom picking is very hard work and not leisurely at all. Around noon, we stopped to rest under an old pine tree. Bernard used an Opinel knife to cut bread into slices, spread butter, opened a jar of pâté, cut sausages and then divided the food equally among the group. Wine was drunk in plastic cups, but amidst the vast scenery of the mountains and forests, with grass, flowers and leaves and bright yellow sunlight, we were completely ecstatic in an indescribable happiness.
After lunch, everyone brought out their own spoils and Bernard was the one to check which mushrooms were edible and which were poisonous and needed to be discarded. We arrived at La Colle sur Loup around 4pm. We spread newspaper on the floor and carefully used a knife to peel off the mushroom stems, removing any insect-eaten parts, then used a brush to scrub off the moss and dirt before washing the mushrooms. Bernard let the mushrooms drain for about 15 minutes and then sliced them into thin slices. The chef was Jeanne, Bernard’s mother.
The Sanguin mushrooms sautéed with potatoes and parsley were paired with a bottle of Côtes de Provence « Les Valentines » rosé wine, full of strawberry, cherry, mineral and fennel aromas. The goose egg omelet with Pied de mouton mushrooms was paired with a bottle of Smith-Haut Lafite Pessac-Leognan white, full of golden apple, cypress and burnt almond aromas.
The final course, Cepe mushrooms cooked with venison in red wine sauce, was served with a bottle of Angelus St Emilion Premier Grand Cru A, classy, powerful and noble.
As we finished our meal, the mountain tops above the town of Vence faded into the lingering evening mist rising from the small river named«The Wolf- Le Loup». It is said that in the Middle Ages, in the autumn, packs of wolves poured down from the mountains into this valley and on moonlit nights, while chasing the falling yellow leaves, they raised their heads to the sky and howled wild songs…
