Fried Chanterelles with Onion and Potatoes

Fried chanterelles are the hit of mushroom season; I can't remember a single year when we didn't fry them. Boiled potatoes topped with fried chanterelles are an indescribable pleasure.

I wonder how many people, hearing the word “lisichka”, would picture the sly red animal with a fluffy tail from popular children's fairy tales? The vast majority know that the lisichka is the chanterelle: a pale orange forest mushroom, unbelievably tasty, growing in our forests in abundance, whole fields of them.

For me, for instance, it brings to mind a bright green carpet of forest moss with orange chanterelle funnels poking out. The chanterelle (Latin Cantharellus cibarius) is an edible mushroom whose stem merges into the cap with no visible border. Its color ranges from pale yellow to deep orange.

The flesh is firm and fibrous, with a slightly tangy taste. It grows practically everywhere in temperate forests, most often in coniferous or mixed woods. The mushrooms come up in large groups, usually after heavy rain. Unfortunately, there are inedible and even poisonous look-alikes. Chanterelles are a valuable medicinal raw material, thanks to substances that are good for the liver and help fight internal parasites. They also contain plenty of amino acids and vitamins.

But real chanterelles are tasty, highly nutritious mushrooms. An important thing about chanterelles: they're never wormy.

You can cook chanterelles almost any way: fry, boil, dry, pickle or salt them. But the tastiest are fried chanterelles. Especially chanterelles with onion and a few spices, or even none at all. Strictly speaking, you don't even need to boil chanterelles first. But to be safe, they're usually boiled briefly, just 15 minutes. Still, simply fried chanterelles are far tastier. Especially fried potatoes with mushrooms , chanterelles in this case. I learned as a kid that the tastiest thing is chanterelles with onion piled on boiled potatoes.