Belanglo Weekender

We headed off for the weekend with a couple of good friends - Julie & Thommo. We've been tripping around the countryside with these fine folks for several years now and we all wanted to have one last camping trip before we headed off on our trip.

We chose Daly's Clearing in Belanglo State Forest because its a lovely, well maintained free-camping area and less than two hours drive from home.

Belanglo Forest may sound familiar - its renowned as Australia's killing fields after several gruesome murders including the infamous Backpacker Murders committed by Ivan Milat.

In 2012, Milat's great-nephew Matthew was convicted of a gruesome axe murder in the forest in 2010.

Skeletal remains found in the forest in 2010 were identified in 2015 as Karlie Pearce-Stevenson, who had been reported missing in Alice Springs in 2008 or 2009. This was another stranger-than-fiction episode, as Karlie's daughter Khandalyce was also murdered and dumped 1100km away in South Australia.

Despite its gruesome history, Belanglo is a popular place for more mundane activities like camping, 4 wheel driving and trail bike riding.

Lactarius deliciosus or Saffron Milk Cap mushroom

We discovered a new activity (to us anyway) after watching several groups of people heading off into the pine plantation with plastic bags and wicker baskets. One of our fellow campers told us they were looking for mushrooms that were edible, extremely tasty and apparently a great delicacy.

Dorothy and John had consumed a big bowl of these mushies the night before and were still with us, so we did the natural thing - took some pictures and googled with a passion to identify them.

Turns out that these little beauties, which were growing throughout the forest are Lactarius deliciosus or Saffron Milk Cap mushrooms. Not only are they plentiful, they are also eminently edible and highly sought after.

We chatted with a group of young people from Sydney who were originally from Poland. They had driven down from Sydney for the day to collect mushrooms and hang out with each other in the forest. They had got themselves bucketloads of mushrooms and were cooking them up with Kransky for a rainy forest feast.

Lucas was cooking the mushrooms and told Julie & I his home grown, original Polish recipe. He gave us a bowl of his freshly cooked shrooms to taste and they were really nice. Beautiful texture  and an interesting flavour - which were able to make with some of our crop that night for dinner.

Lucas' Recipe

Ingredients

6-8 medium sized mushrooms

2 rashers of bacon

Garlic to taste

2 tbsp clarified butter

Chopped parsley to taste

Method

Chop the bacon into small squares and cook over moderate heat to get some fat in the pan

Chop mushrooms - pretty well whatever size you want, but "smallish" works well 

Add garlic

Add the mushrooms and cook slowly over low heat. The mushrooms absorb tons of water when they are growing in the rain and you need to cook off some of the water.

There will be a thick, orangey brown liquid in the pan . . . perfect !

Add the clarified butter and turn the heat up to moderate.

Stir well - mushies will brown up a little with the heat.

Serve and garnish with chopped parsley

We had ours with roast beef for dinner !

It was a rainy but warm weekend - great fun and great company and we did eventually get enough good weather that Julie & Thommo could pack up a mostly dry camper.

Thank goodness for the awning - where we spent a lot off the weekend chatting & laughing

Not the world's biggest bonfire - Thommo & Julie wondered where "firebug" Jayne had gone ?

Thommo & Jayne enjoying a glass of wine in the pine plantation