Fried Potatoes with Fresh Honey Mushrooms and Onions

Cooking method

1. Step 1:

   

   Gather the ingredients. The most time-consuming part of prepping this dish is gathering the honey mushrooms. It's an important, careful job: you need to be able to tell true honey mushrooms from false ones so you don't pick anything poisonous. After foraging, sort the mushrooms carefully, rinse them, and trim off part of the stem, leaving a couple of centimeters below the cap.

2. Step 2:

   

   With freshly picked mushrooms it's best to soak them for a couple of hours in cold salted water — this removes not just any dirt but also any insects hiding in them. Then rinse the mushrooms again and drain them in a colander so the excess water runs off. You can cut up the large caps and leave the small ones whole.

3. Step 3:

   

   Wash, peel, and cut the potatoes into thin sticks or cubes, whichever you prefer. Peel the onion; if it's small, cut it into rings, and if it's large, into half-rings.

4. Step 4:

   

   Pour vegetable oil into a skillet and heat it up. Add the honey mushrooms, then the bay leaf and peppercorns. Fry the mushrooms in the oil over medium heat for about 10 minutes, stirring with a spatula.

5. Step 5:

   

   Now add the prepared onion to the mushrooms, stir, and keep frying together for 7 minutes, stirring with a spatula now and then. Remove the bay leaf from the pan.

6. Step 6:

   

   Add the potatoes to the skillet with the mushrooms, pour in a little more vegetable oil, stir, and fry for about another 20 minutes over medium heat, until the potatoes are tender. Don't cover the pan while frying, or the potatoes will turn to mush.

7. Step 7:

   

   Stir now and then, but not too often, so you don't break up the potato sticks. At the end, salt to taste. Gently combine the potatoes and mushrooms and turn off the heat. The dish is ready. Serve it sprinkled with chopped fresh herbs, alongside fresh vegetables and bread. Enjoy!