Foraged Food Friday: Field mushrooms

On the same foraging expedition that I wrote about last week, I spotted a couple of white disks in a field.

Are those what I think they are?

Closer inspection, including flipping the caps over and poking the stem to check it didn't turn yellow on bruising...

Field mushroom (Agaricus campestris) in a field

... confirmed my initial suspicion that these were indeed field mushrooms. Even better, they're so close to home that I took them back to put in the fridge (leaving a couple of others intact in the field) before setting out on my walk again. This is the first mushroom I learnt to identify and I thought it was the same as the commonly cultivated one, but Wikipedia tells me that it's just closely related. Either way, it's very similar and tastes much the same, only fresher.

Having found these, I returned a couple of days later in the hope that more might have come up. Sure enough, I found another two, of which I picked one to use as pizza topping (with baby courgettes. That was the best pizza I've had in ages!) Two days later again, there was another. There might not be a huge quantity here, but it's so close to home that it's worth popping over there just to check whether there's another one or two - always being careful not to over-pick, of course. What a find!

Also harvesting this week
Courgettes (fruit and flowers)
Broad beans
French beans
Hogweed seeds (some of which are drying, others have gone into various preserves)
Fairy ring champignon (you remember me saying I was going to take mushrooms slowly, study carefully, and learn one at a time? I may have got slightly carried away...)

Also eating
Kelp

Also drinking
Elderflower champagne
Sloe wine

Foraged food challenge summary page here.