As the long summer days begin to dramatically shorten, the feeling of sadness that summer is almost over is quickly tempered by the anticipated fungal growth in the forests and the greeting between friends: “Kas seenele lähme?” (Want to go mushrooming?).
This year the summer rains continued long after Laulupidu, with electrical storms rushing over the country almost every day. All this water was great for the frogs and for mushrooms.
The first kukeseened (chanterelles) were in the markets in mid-August, and our friends in Elva were very keen to show us the wonderful bounty of their secret forest location. As an Australian who knows that 99.9% of plants or mushrooms in the bush are poisonous, the bounty of the Eesti mets (Estonian forest) is something of a fairytale.
My first step into the mossland under the harilikud männid (Scots pines) and my foot was surrounded by little golden yellow kukeseened just asking to be eaten. The forest also had a carpet of mustikad and pohlad (blueberries and lingonberries) plants with their small coloured fruit. My host explained that this year the forest fruits were not very common because there was a frost when they were flowering which killed off the flowers.
After a couple of hours, we had three baskets full of kukeseened and went home to prepare and cook them over a cup of tea and a taste of the other fruits growing in their garden: mustad sõstrad, punased sõstrad and the last few maasikad (blackcurrants, redcurrants and strawberries).
Now that we are in September our friends were keen to show us how the mushrooms had changed. “Tule Tartusse ja käime seenel!” – Come to Tartu and let’s go mushrooming!
Indeed there were only one or two kukeseened left and the fallen yellow kask (silver birch) leaves kept giving false hope, however the variety of other mushrooms was amazing with red, orange, yellow, pink, purple, white and brown caps all through the forest. We kept seeking the expert knowledge of our host, who would crush and throw away the mürgised (poisonous) mushrooms and excitedly discuss how best to cook the suuri söödavaid (big edible) mushrooms. Unfortunately we didn’t see any deadly poisonous kärbseseeni (fly agarics), famous from our fairytales with its beautiful red cap with white dots, so I am still not sure they are real!
Our baskets today were full of kuuseriisikad (orange milkcaps), kuldpilvikad (gilded brittlegills), šampinjonid (champignons) and the last kukeseened, but the best surprise was the suured sirmikud (parasol mushrooms), huge brown and white plate sized mushrooms which we crumbed and fried in butter like generations of eestlased (Estonians) have done during this bountiful season.
Winter may be around the corner, but first: lähme seenele!
