The season of mists and mellow fruitfulness is arriving, and so are the cèpes. They may not look like much, if you've never eaten them, but they leave every other kind of mushroom in the shade. Truffles are nothing compared to cèpes. They are rich and meaty and I long for them all the rest of the year.
"My cèpes are 100% French," said my greengrocer at the marché this morning. His cèpes were also more than 28 euros the kilo, which is why you see only four in the bag. "I had to get there at four in the morning to get them. If you see cèpes at 13 euros the kilo," he said scornfully, "they are from the Ukraine."
That made me nervous for a reason he didn't know. I lived in Munich at the time of the Chernobyl nuclear meltdown, and the rain carrying the Chernobyl dust happened to sweep over Sweden and then down across Germany before falling on Munich, where I was caught in it and drenched. A Bavarian radiologist, who had been riding a bicycle with his son when the rain fell, promptly sued the government, claiming we should have been warned about the rain. Being soaked in the rain, we had received the equivalent of several x-rays.
The Germans were alarmed and frightened by the disaster in the Ukraine. The whole country was turned upside down. Scientists tested meadows, markets and playgrounds with Geiger counters. Cows were forbidden to graze outside, people were told to stay indoors as much as possible, milk was banned, and all wooden playground equipment in the entire country was planed to remove the outer layer. Mushrooms were outlawed and berries were destroyed; newspapers reported that forest products, especially mushrooms, were highly contaminated with radioactive cesium-137 and strontium-90. The advice given about ordinary farm vegetables was to avoid salad and "Wash everything."
"Wer tut das bitte schön nicht?!" exclaimed an outraged Hausfrau on television. [Who on earth doesn't do that?]
There was nothing but Chernobyl in the media for at least a month.
About a week after Chernobyl, I took the train to Paris. As I crossed the border into France, cows suddenly appeared in the fields, and little children were blithely playing in the playgrounds as if nothing had happened. I couldn't understand it until later, when I found out that France gets most of its electricity from nuclear power.
I would never buy Ukrainian cèpes. I try not to think too much about the French ones.
My French in-laws lived in Lozere at the time of Chernobyl, and were never warned about the dangers of eating cepes--and something like 25% of Lozeriens have had to have their thyroid removed. I recently went to the doctor in Nice, and my physician wanted me to have my thyroid checked--until she found out that I had been living in the US at the time of Chernobyl. "You're safe, then," she told me. I'd never thought about the connection before...
Posted by: Gem | 10 September 2006 at 01:20
Okay, so which marché did you find those at? Place Monge had none :(
Posted by: Cathy | 10 September 2006 at 15:27
Cathy, notice that my guy said he had to get there at four in the morning to buy them himself! He often has things no one else in the marché has.
Posted by: Sedulia | 10 September 2006 at 15:51