Foraged Fungi Rice served with Local Rose Veal Schnitzels

  Happiness in early autumn has always been a long walk with good company on a sunny day, munching on blackberries and the occasional plum as we talk about nothing in particular. Finding the occasional Chanterelle, Cep or field mushroom along the way to pop into a backpack.
  Perfect specimens of young Ceps should be dipped in egg and then fine breadcrumbs and fried in a light oil. Not the healthiest of dishes but very tasty and you will have burned off plenty of calories finding the fungi earlier in the day.
   Mostly, however, they are larger, older fungi when they are found, and Chanterelles are often so scarce as to only find a tiny handful, so adding them to rice is the perfect solution.
  Schnitzels are a simple Austrian dish and can be made with Rose Veal, pork fillet or turkey breast.It uses bread crumbs so you can use up any bread that has gone stale, Simply break it up into smaller pieces and using the blunt end of a rolling pin pound it away to crumbs and roughly sieve it so you have fine crumbs. Great way to get rid of pent up aggression too!

For the Rice
A tablespoon of light oil
A small onion (or half a medium sized one) diced
selection of fungi also diced (you'll only need a handful or two of fungi)
Uncooked Rice (enough for the number of people you are feeding)

Fry the diced onion in oil in a large frying pan that you have a lid for.
When the onion is glossy and translucent add the fungi and fry until they are well sweated and about half the size.
Turn down the heat and add the rice and enough boiling water to cook it in. Stir once.
Cover and cook on low heat until the rice is ready.
Serve.


Rose Veal Schnitzels

Rose Veal Escalope (Westons Farm in Bampton sell fabulous quality veal) you can use turkey breast or pork  fillet
plain flour
2 eggs, well beaten
breadcrumbs.
Light oil for shallow frying

  Find 3 shallow but roomy plastic boxes or metal trays. one each for the flour, eggs and breadcrumbs.
Firstly you need to beat your meat. Place it on a thick chopping board and beat it either with the blunt end of rolling pin or a proper meat beating mallet. don't do it too much so that you end up with holes in it, but it does need to be quite thin so it cooks quickly.
  Take your first piece of beaten meat. drop it into the tray of flour and shake the tray back and forth till it's well coated with flour.
   Take your meat out of the flour tray and drop it in the egg tray. using a fork, turn the meat over so that both sides are coated with egg. take meat out of egg using the fork and let the excess drip off, back into the eggy tray.
  Now drop your meat into the breadcrumb tray and shake well so it's thoroughly coated. put on a plate till you are ready to cook it and repeat the process with each piece of meat.
  Heat up a frying pan with about 1cm of light oil.
  Cook your Schnitzels in batches, frying one side then the other till your schnitzel is golden brown. Put on a sheet of kitchen roll or napkin so the excess oil is absorbed into the paper. If you have lots of them to cook place the done ones in a warmed oven.
  Once all are cooked, serve with rice, salad or green beans.