Saved by a woman in a grey coat with a tartan shopping trolley. Not that I hadn’t noticed the porcini I was about to buy were a bad lot. Even my amateur eyes could see that the worm holes were more craters than pin pricks, that the half-dozen specimens looked like they had been in a scrap. Yet again though, as is also my way in clothes shops and Italian perfumeries, I was trapped in a transaction; somehow indebted to the man and about to spend the best part of 20 euros on some dodgy mushrooms. The woman’s interception was impressive. Was I making soup? she asked, putting herself between me and the crate. “If so, a few of the coral capped ones and field mushrooms would do the job – just boost them with porcini secchi (dried porcini); even a handful of chestnuts.” At that she put her bag of chestnuts at the top of her trolley and headed to the butcher. Porcino means something reminiscent of a pig or piglet, perhaps after the bulbous stems, pale with five-o’clock shadow, which is o