Wild Chanterelles

Credit: Kurt Smith

Last August I was hiking near my house in western Massachusetts with my Swedish goddaughter, Josefin, when she suddenly cried out, "Chanterelles!" There they were, two clumps of ruffle-edged, bright yellow mushrooms growing beneath a hemlock tree. But were they really chanterelles? Josefin was sure of it; her mother forages for them near their home in Sweden every summer. We picked them, but I made her promise there'd be no cooking until I did some research. Once I was certain these weren't one of the six varieties of poisonous mushroom that grow in New England, we sautéed our chanterelles in butter and then added a splash of heavy cream. When the liquid had mostly evaporated, we sprinkled them with sea salt and a grind of pepper. The chanterelles were firm and meaty and tasted of the woods they came from. —Nancy Pick, Sunderland, Massachusetts