RealEpicurean.com

Apparantly today is Blog Day 2006. Being ultimately professional, I didn’t actually discover this until 23:10 on the 31st of August (as I’m writing, now), which means Blog Day has only 50 minutes remaining. Oh well, better late then never, I suppose (incidentaly thanks to Becks & Posh, where I learned this information!).

Mike Robinson is becoming well known in the UK due to his regular appearances on UKTV Food (England’s only TV food channel), where he cooks in a different style to the other ‘run of the mill’ TV chefs, specializing in wild food and game.

We are entering that time in the year when summer begins to draw to a close and the nights draw in; when food begins to get really interesting. Before we get to that time of the culinary calendar (our favourite) when mushrooms and pumpkins are in full swing, it’s time to start collecting the last of summer’s goodies, preserving and drying for the winter. Now is the ideal time to start preparing chutneys, jams, pickles and preserves ready for the winter months.

This week we were ‘reliably’ informed that due to the recent heavy rain, mushroom season had come early, and the nearby forests were full of them, ripe for the picking. My wife has been mushroom picking before in Poland (she’s Polish), however this was to be my first time, so armed with my 1980s mushroom identifying book, we headed off to the nearest forest.

This recipe appears here at the request of a colleague at work, who wondered how to make potatoes taste ‘like they do on holiday’.

The real key to the difference in taste in these simply boiled potatoes is the boiling in the skins, and peeling after, as opposed to peeling before. For extra authenticity, you could boil in seawater where available.