African mushroom hunting

In March, there were unusually abundant rains in the west of Algeria, in. Sahara, and there began "Quiet hunting": Berbera nomads sometimes come out early in the morning to search for white sand truffles. These relict mushrooms of the Great African Desert in abundance grow under the sand in low shrub thickets.

Under the long tradition, boys and girls are more often on the collection of truffles. In the spring, which, depending on the rains, sometimes falls in Sahara, even for the new year, but now coincided with the calendar, young people get the opportunity not only to find the famous delicacy, but also to get acquainted with each other away from their parents.

There are no pigs in the desert, which, for example, help the French find truffles, or bears who have done the same thing in Russia. Therefore, the mushrooms have to find mushrooms on the long-lasting signs: in places where the lacquer tubers are hiding under the sand, hollows are formed, and there are always blooming on a short time white and purple heliotrops or other flowers stretching to the Sun. The mushroom snaps up a soft soft soil and, if lucky, pulls out white tubers. Sometimes they are and brown, depending on the soil and roots of the plants, to which they cling.

Sugar truffles are usually small – the size of walnut to mandarin. But come and good luck who remember the years. So, eight years ago there were several truffles weighing up to 3.5 kilograms.

On the beginning "Quiet hunt" Immediately learn in the markets. In the West Sahar city of Beshar these days, Boyko trades truffles. Prices for so delicacious mushrooms are not very large – 5-6 dollars per kilogram. Wholesale purchaskers who send truffles to the Algerian capital on the Mediterranean, and from there in the ports of France for gourmets with a tight wallet.

Algerians also enjoy the truffles. But prepare them on their own way. Straight in the desert bonfire from shUSD Waiting until he will burn to coal or to ash, and then bake mushrooms in them, like potatoes in Russia. Prepared in this way, they are fragrant, and before the delicious, that your fingers are license. They say that they are not inferior to the French brethren, about whom Pushkin wrote in "Evgenia Onegin": "And truffles, luxury young years, french cuisine best color".

And in Neighboring with Algeria Morocco, the most mushroom places – in Dubrava. Cork forest in Morocco – truly fabulous. Especially in December and January, when it is abundantly watering the rain and collecting a gray porous bark at the rhizoma of the tree finished. Every year, the pemer peasants are cut to 300 thousand cubic meters of valuable raw materials to clog the best Moroccan wines and export for bottles of a good Europeanist sparkling.

And in the spring, among low, strongly plugged oaks, in small herbs, among the acorns and colors such as imbalance – real abundance. Other mushrooms occur much less. Oyah the same as we have, well, maybe a little more larger yes. Grow straight under the oaks, where in our forests are mostly looking for white. If you are lucky, you can attack a whole fungal carpet.

There are practically no mushrooms in Dumbers. Moroccan mushrooms, especially since, simply do not eat. Exception are only truffles. And then – thanks to the French, which in colonial times they set the love of these dodded delicacies to the indigenous population – Arabs and Berbers. But the skills of collecting truffles with search pigs could not be instilled: cork bark hotkers – Muslims. And in Morocco, unlike Algeria, truffles are not white, but brownish, but they collect them mostly for sale. Along the road often you can see peasants with brownish mushroom slides. Please buy! Yourself find, not having the right skill, oh how difficult. Yes, and there is nothing more expensive for the Russian, which was listed in Morocco than "Own – nice guys", collected under the warm sun of Africa. Have a discount focus, they clarify life and fried with potatoes, and saline in Moscow, in Ryazan or somehow else.