Mushroom
Yellow foot
CamagrocCamagrocCraterellus lutescens
Small, hollow, with a yellow stem and a brown cap: a little trumpet hiding in the moss. It turns up when the other mushrooms have gone, just in time for Christmas.
When
Around: Nov–Jan · At its best: Dec
Around: Nov–Jan · At its best: Dec
Around: May–Jul · At its best: Jun
Around here
In Catalonia the camagroc is the Christmas mushroom: it comes up from November to January, often in big groups, in damp woods with moss, and closes the mushroom season that chanterelles and ceps open. Many households save some, fresh or dried, for the holiday meals.
At the market
- Only pick or eat what you know for sure. If in doubt, ask a mycological society such as the Societat Catalana de Micologia, or buy them at the market.
- In the woods: a basket, not a plastic bag; a knife or scissors to cut them at the stem without ripping up the moss; leave the small ones. Some areas need a permit or set a limit in kilos: check first.
- At the market: bright yellow stems, supple, with no wet or blackened bits.
- They should be free of soil and moss: they grow in clumps and often come with leaves stuck to them.
At home
- If you're not sure what it is, don't keep it or eat it: throw it away.
- Split them lengthways if needed and clean the hollow inside, which hides soil and creepy-crawlies.
- In the fridge, in paper or a cloth, never in plastic: three or four days.
If you have too much
- Dry them: they're one of the mushrooms that dry best. Spread out somewhere airy or in a very low oven, then into a closed jar.
- To use them dried, soak in warm water for half an hour; strain the water and add it to the stew.
- Freeze them sautéed, in portions, and they'll be ready for the next celebration.
In the kitchen
- In the Christmas chicken stuffing, with chestnuts, prunes and pine nuts.
- Sautéed with garlic and parsley, with eggs or on toast.
- In the sauce for a meat stew or for duck.
- In a winter rice dish with cabbage and botifarra sausage.
- With leek and cream, alongside meat or pasta.
What it brings
There's no reliable figure for this one in the tables, so we don't make one up.
Goes with
- ChestnutOct–DecBefore potatoes, chestnuts were winter bread in many European mountains. Today they mostly mean smoke in the street and hot newspaper cones in your hands.
- Sweet potatoSept–JanIt looks like a potato with ambitions, but in the oven it turns almost into a pudding: slow heat converts some of its starch into sugar.
- CabbageOct–MarA vegetable that gets better in the cold: after a few frosts cabbage turns sweeter. One head will feed you all week without repeating a dish.
- LeekOct–MarAn onion that never forms a bulb and tastes milder. The white part comes from earthing it up as it grows: the higher the soil, the longer the white.