The mushroom that got away

We had a fondue yesterday. Something that we do over here quite often but a stock based fondue rather than oil. A style of fondue-ing which we first came across years ago in Majorca. The beef is very finely sliced, then rolled up and basically poached in the stock, rather than fried. For carnivores it's delicious but not, if you're not. It's easy to slice finely if the meat is first frozen and then allowed to defrost just enough to cut through it. The flavour is great. 

Quite a simple fondue it was, but lovely, with freshly prepared salad and French dressing; oven baked chipped potatoes - a recipe I found on the internet: Tablespoon of olive oil per 400gms of pototoes and plenty of seasoning. Leave skins on the potatoes but scrub them well, then quarter them till they look vaguely chip-like. Put all the potatoes into the seasoned oil. Mix well and then put them into a hot oven for about 35/40 minutes. They are soooo good.  Just enough oil for them to cook and bags of flavour. Mushrooms - which we buy fresh from a local producer, were duly wiped clean and then quartered this into sizeable pieces, as they were reasonably sized. Various dips, mustards etc.

As usual it was the mushrooms that caused the problems. Why do they always escape and float around in the fondue pot? They're so difficult to catch, hiding as they do under the all fondue forks or whatever they're called. Inevitably you get accused of having knicked someone's else's mushroom. Not to mention any names of course.

Not that I often read articles about the genetic code, but one recently discussed the 40% of DNA that humans share with the mushroom. I don't know if the percentage changes with different mushrooms - so please no one ask me! The reassuring words at the end of another feature, that we're not,  " . . . committing cannibalism when we eat a mushroom risotto",  came as sharp relief. I couldn't face the idea of going into the market on Thursday and saying to Madame Champignon, otherwise known as Chantelle, that I could no longer buy her mushrooms as it was a cannibalistic act to eat them. Somehow I don't think she would have understood, and in any case we like mushroom risottos, especially when they're made with Shitake mushrooms. Humans and mushrooms apparently split into two groups about 1. 5 billion years ago.  

As for the other genetic comparisons that were mentioned - well they really offered an excuse for all the anthropomorphic behaviour that humans can indulge in. Apparently we're 90% cat, 80% cow, 75% and 75% mouse. Fortunately most of these things won't make it into a fondue, but it does make you wonder about the qualities that make us uniquely human.