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Cooking Chantrelles at Lake Boravoye

Boravoye is a region of forests and lakes in northern Kazakhstan. We spent two weeks there in July 2002 and spent a lot of time gathering mushrooms and cooking them over a fire on the lake shore. The best were chantrelles. The part of the forest where we gathered them was too dark to take a photo. They tend to grow in closed forest with little undergrowth. Here's a picture of Sveta in a brighter part with some kind of Russula mushrooms - I'm not sure which, but that's not so important with Russula species as none of them are poisonous (although some of them are better to eat than others). She's only pretending to pick them. We did cook some other Russula that we found but the ones in this picture were too old.

This is Ashy cutting up chantrelles. You can see the smoke from the fire and the forest in the background. This is on the shore of Lake Bolshoe Chebache but you can't see the water. You'll see it in the next picture. The chanterelles are a lovely colour aren't they? That's part of their attraction. When you find them in the dark gloomy forest they just glow and unlike other mushrooms which often lose their colour when cooked, chantrelles remain bright yellow right until the end.

Now the mushrooms are in the pan sizzling away and Ashy is stirring away with a little spatula which he made earlier from a piece of birch. There's no smoke because the fire was left to burn right down to a heap of red hot embers. That way you don't get black flakes in your mushrooms and your pan is easy to wash. Note the lake in the background.

And here is the proof that Ashy's Boravoye chantrelles are really tasty. Doesn't Sveta look as if she's enjoying them?

Finally, the end to a perfect day.
Sunset over Lake Boravoye.