Chicken of the Woods

For this photo blog, I had thought that I would only take photographs of people, not things. I used to take photographs of buildings when I was a student studying architecture and if I look back over the photos I took at university, I see only stone and glass. People are more interesting. How people have changed, the clothes they wore, forgotten faces. But here is a photo of a thing - the mushroom I most like to eat, Chicken of the Woods.

The day before, I went for a walk along the river with my friend Andy and Harry dog. We bumped into this specimen growing on some fallen Willow. It is young and fresh - the finest possible state in which to eat it. I was a little nervous of eating it growing on Willow, as I have never heard of it growing here before. I am told that it is not good to eat it when found growing on Yew. And some people simply do not get on with it (they chuck their guts) so I am also nervous when offering it to someone new. But Andy loved it and he suffered no ill effects.

The flesh is soft and delicate like scallops, and the taste is light, mushroomy, chicken and lemon. I went back the following day to get some more and to take this photo. The tasting plate I did for Andy was simply fried in butter with some garlic and salt. Amazing. I tried some later with tomatoes and this was good too. Then I tried a 'proper' dish with real chicken and cream. The cream went well, but the real chicken did not stand well next to the mushroom - by comparison, the chicken seemed bland and tough. This is a dish to be savoured on its own.