Les Champignons et les Truffes

SOME SPECIES OF mushroom are admittedly deadly poisonous and others will make you feel more or less ill; on the other hand, some of the most highly prized varieties are impossible to confuse with the dangerous ones, and this happens to be particularly true of those which grow quite commonly in South-West France. If you go to the market in any country town you will usually find some of the farmer’s wives with a basket of whatever mushroom happens to be seasonal, and you will soon learn to identify the varieties quite easily. Because the seasons of the different species seldom overlap, you will find that any variety is referred to simply as champignon, confusing, as the word does not refer only to what we understand by a field mushroom. The French use the word rather as they do gibier, which means anything wild that moves on however many legs, so long as it can be eaten.