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Invisiblenaum
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Registered: 10/09/07
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‘If You Are Normal, You Search for Mushrooms’ [Russia]
    #19720636 - 03/19/14 07:30 PM (10 years, 3 months ago)

Source: The New York Times
Quote:


‘If You Are Normal, You Search for Mushrooms’
By AKHIL SHARMA
Published: October 3, 2013

What is it with Russians and their mushroom hunts?

“Other than getting drunk and punching each other, mushroom hunting is what we Russians love most,” the novelist Gary Shteyngart told me over drinks at a party in New York.

“If you are normal, you search for mushrooms,” said Julia Schelkunova, a Moscow-based Russian translator and guide (and owner of a plant nursery), sounding as if she were shrugging her shoulders. “Calling yourself a mushroom hunter is like calling yourself a pizza eater. You just do it.”

Opinions are equally forceful about how it should be done. Recently I was in a cafe near Red Square, examining a mushroom hunting map — one that many Moscow newsstands carry during summer. A waiter, looking over my shoulder, muttered in disgust, “Those who need maps to find mushrooms, never find any.”

One can partly explain the Russian love of mushrooms by the simple fact that the mushrooms found there are some of the best in the world. “I grew up with a mushroom guidebook in my hand,” said Nicolas Courtois, the executive chef at the Ritz-Carlton, Moscow, who spent his childhood in Burgundy, another region famed for its edible fungus. In Burgundy, though, “you find only a few types of mushrooms,” Mr. Courtois said. “Here you find everything and in quantity.” During the height of mushroom hunting season, which runs from September through the middle of October, he serves a mushroom-centric menu. Mushroom season is, according to him, “one of the things that makes Russia worth living in.”

I teach Russian literature and know the country well, but for my wife Russia was mysterious and intimidating. I wanted to show her St. Petersburg, Moscow and the historically important towns near it called the Golden Ring; I also wanted to take her into the country’s landscape and, if possible, introduce her to the ordinary life of Russians. Mushroom hunting seemed as if it might offer the perfect window.

Because edible and poisonous mushrooms can resemble each other so closely, only a madman would go looking for mushrooms on his own in an unfamiliar forest. To arrange our trip, we used the travel outfitter Abercrombie & Kent. The company either found mushroom hunters directly or through local tourism offices. (Even if you speak Russian fluently, arranging mushroom hunters through tourism offices would be maddeningly frustrating. I paid Abercrombie & Kent about $200 a day.)

Mushroom hunting is popular all over Russia. Some heavily forested areas, like those in Siberia, are considered so good for fungi that people travel there to pick mushrooms the way that people travel to the American Northwest to fly-fish. But Russia is a huge country, so we stuck to the areas around Moscow and St. Petersburg.

Late one August afternoon we left the capital by van for our first hunt, centered about 70 miles west of the city, in the woods near a hotel called the Eco Farm Potapovo, where we stayed.

One of the reasons to leave Russia’s cities is that it allows one to see a more authentic side of the country. But what counts as authentic has gotten complicated lately, as rural Russia appears racked with nostalgia for the pre-Soviet era.

The state emblem of the hammer and sickle has been replaced by the czar-era double-headed eagle (on pediments of buildings, the iron gates to government compounds, the flags that government cars sometimes fly), and the rich of Russia are building summer homes that look like 19th-century wooden dachas, with their filigreed carvings and sloping eaves.

The Eco Farm had some of that aesthetic, but in the spirit of contemporary Russia — where more is more — it also had a polo field, a stocked pond for fishing, and its own cows so that one can have fresh milk as if one were on a country estate in a Chekhov play. Those looking for authenticity might find their heads spinning.

The woman who took my wife and me into the woods, an employee of the hotel, was wearing tight white jeans and high heels. As she walked, she kept apologizing for the fact that it hadn’t rained and so there wouldn’t be many mushrooms. She was right: we only found puffballs, which Russians call “the devil’s tobacco.”

In the absence of other bounty, we did collect, through our guide’s chatter, strange superstitions: Among the reasons people prefer to come from Moscow to sleep in wooden dachas is that sleep in a wooden building is much more restful than in an ordinary house; five hours of sleep in a wooden house is worth eight in an ordinary one; if one has a country home, one should not leave furniture out at night, because moonlight ruins furniture.

Our next hunt was in Yaroslavl, in the Golden Ring, about four hours northeast of Moscow, an ancient city, which, during the 1600s, was the de facto capital of Russia. But again, we came up empty. Wandering among trees, we kicked up plumes of dust, and our potbellied guide smoked cigarettes and made jokes about the various poisonous varieties that we spotted. “This one is for someone you dislike,” he said, and “that one is for someone you hate.”

We backtracked south to an area near Suzdal, a small thousand-year-old town that through various tricks of fate was left alone by both the Soviets and the industrialization of the 19th century. The town is so beautiful and well preserved that directors shoot historical movies in its streets. There are 54 churches and five monasteries for a population of 12,000.

It was drizzling the morning that we left our hotel. We drove first to one woods and then, after seeing footprints, left for another. Our guide, Vladimir Shashilov, was a tall muscular man who worked for a local power plant.

Russian woods, because they have such a large quantity of birch and aspen, trees that begin growing branches only relatively far from the ground, feel different from American woods. One does not feel smothered. One can see between the tall straight trunks for hundreds of feet, so there is the sense of being in a grove instead of a forest, a feeling that we had to periodically reset when we saw things like the large scat of wild boar.

In Russian literature, mushroom hunting often represents the interior landscape, love of family, freedom from tyranny, a connection to the sacred. Soon, Mr. Shashilov was sounding like a character out of Turgenev or Nabokov. “My wife adores hunting mushrooms,” he said. “She is afraid of getting lost in the woods though, and so she usually follows behind me.”

He added: “When you quarrel, you go mushroom hunting and after an hour or two, you are friends again.”

There were mushrooms everywhere that morning — fields of orange trumpet-shaped chanterelles that Russians call “little foxes”; large, brown-capped porcini that are so treasured they are named the “czar’s mushrooms.” The porcini smelled like cream. One was enormous. I cut it down the center of its spongy cap to see if the insides were white and healthy. As I carried it around with me in a wicker basket, the aroma was so intense, it was as if I were carrying a bucket of milk.

We took the mushrooms to a local restaurant, but the chef overcooked them horribly. Later, at the Four Seasons in St. Petersburg, Andrea Accordi, one of the most acclaimed chefs in Russia, looked genuinely angry as I told him what had happened. “It is their style to cook them like this,” he said, referring to the Russian tendency to boil or fry their mushrooms; sometimes both.

When we spoke in August, he had just started cooking at the hotel after having returned from a mushroom hunting trip to Siberia. “Porcini have so much energy,” he said. “Chanterelles are delicate. When you bring wild mushrooms into the kitchen, you are bringing in the forest. You boil them and the forest is gone. If you have mushrooms of this quality, you should serve them raw in a salad or maybe roast them slightly. To do any more is a waste.”

Our last mushroom hunt was just outside St. Petersburg’s dense core in Beloostrov, near the Gulf of Finland. In this instance, too, we experienced an aspect of Russia that we otherwise might have missed. Beloostrov is grooved with anti-tank trenches, left over from World War II, which are ideal for mushrooms.

The day we went to Beloostrov was bright and beautiful. The leaves of the aspens trembled and winked. There were children hunting mushrooms in the woods, and their parents, in what is a common tactic because of the danger of getting lost, had pinned small bells to their shirts. As I walked among the tall trees, I kept hearing tinkling, as if the forest were full of fairies.

There were mushrooms, basketfuls. As I collected them, I was determined to have them prepared Mr. Accordi’s way.



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OfflineSyd Barrett
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Re: ‘If You Are Normal, You Search for Mushrooms’ [Russia] [Re: naum]
    #19721073 - 03/19/14 08:59 PM (10 years, 3 months ago)

My fiancé is from Russia and her parents love to go mushroom hunting. They actually told a story about we're one of their friends was picking mushrooms and the cops rolled up on him and tried to arrest.


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Invisiblepablokabute
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Re: ‘If You Are Normal, You Search for Mushrooms’ [Russia] [Re: Syd Barrett]
    #19722690 - 03/20/14 08:37 AM (10 years, 3 months ago)

got the original link?


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Invisiblenatzyshroomer
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Re: ‘If You Are Normal, You Search for Mushrooms’ [Russia] [Re: pablokabute]
    #19722848 - 03/20/14 09:35 AM (10 years, 3 months ago)

In mother Russia , shroom finds you!


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OfflineRogerAdams
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Re: ‘If You Are Normal, You Search for Mushrooms’ [Russia] [Re: pablokabute]
    #19722860 - 03/20/14 09:38 AM (10 years, 3 months ago)


Just google search the title. The original poster should have included it because there are accompanying pictures interspersed that were referenced in the text.

Edited by naum (03/20/14 12:01 PM)

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Invisiblenaum
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Re: ‘If You Are Normal, You Search for Mushrooms’ [Russia] [Re: RogerAdams]
    #19723574 - 03/20/14 12:01 PM (10 years, 3 months ago)

Yes, my mistake. Thanks for the post. I updated the original post with a link a single page format and that should bypass the articles seen per month paywall.


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OfflineGorlax
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Re: ‘If You Are Normal, You Search for Mushrooms’ [Russia] [Re: naum]
    #19723685 - 03/20/14 12:28 PM (10 years, 3 months ago)

I wouldn't doubt it one of my friends family was from Poland. Not a far stretch from Russia and it was customary for them as a family to go picking. One time they brought back an entire blanket full of shit!

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OfflineCamwritesgonzo
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Re: ‘If You Are Normal, You Search for Mushrooms’ [Russia] [Re: natzyshroomer]
    #19724437 - 03/20/14 03:06 PM (10 years, 3 months ago)

Quote:

natzyshroomer said:
In mother Russia , shroom finds you!



Hey, if the shrooms don't get you, the Kroks will. :wink:


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Offlinegt40
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Re: ‘If You Are Normal, You Search for Mushrooms’ [Russia] [Re: Camwritesgonzo] * 1
    #19855100 - 04/16/14 04:45 PM (10 years, 2 months ago)

Russian love to collect mushrooms, yes. But also should not be exaggerated.) Fishing for example is such a beloved and characteristic folk fun. In Russian folklore and cinema fishing devoted much more. Not to mention hunting )

Edited by gt40 (04/16/14 04:47 PM)

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