When I brought a basket of black chanterelles to the dacha a couple of weeks ago, the neighbor looked at me in bewilderment: “Chanterelles? Black? I’ve never seen them here.” And he lives there, like us, soon 35 years.

And it’s no wonder to miss these mushrooms — black chanterelles in our northern latitudes prefer to grow in damp mixed forests with birch litter, against which they are almost invisible – even large families and witch circles.

Let the yellow chanterelles cheerfully call for mushroom pickers, let the other neighbors in the mixed forest show snow—white hats from under dark leaves. Black chanterelles like to hide. The only exception is if they run out to a completely swampy edge on the green moss, they are more noticeable there.

But black chanterelles are an interesting and delicious mushroom. In dried form, they acquire a strong, thick and even heavy aroma of mushrooms mixed with dried fruits.

In France, they are called “death pipes” and are used along with truffles and morels in haute cuisine. And we made Korean carrots, risotto, cutlets with them, and even a unique harsh male mushroom jam for steak with lingonberry juice, juniper, rosemary and sea salt.

The recipe, however, was stolen by the Musrooms restaurant, and you can try it there too. For the crazy thousands.