Category Archives: Fungi

The Bear’s Head

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Check out this crazy looking fungus. From a distance it looks like a frozen waterfall. Close up you can see that all those little icicle-like projections are attached to arms, like the tentacles of an undersea creature. This is Hericium abietis, better known as the bear’s head mushroom. Other mushrooms in the Hericium genus include the lion’s mane (Hericium erinaceus) and the bear’s head tooth fungus (Hericium americanum). I usually find the bear’s head in old-growth forests, where it colonizes conifer stumps and logs and can be found fruiting in the same spot for several years. To harvest it, you slice off the appendages with a knife, careful to leave the attached stalk so it will fruit again.

I found this one while hiking in an ancient, moss-draped forest near Mt. Rainier with my friend Cora. On a day filled with edible mushrooms of various species, this one was the most spectacular. To give some perspective, the fungus in the photo above is about 18″ X 18″. Amazingly, we found it right in the middle of a trail where an old log had been cut to open a passage. How many hundreds of hikers and bikers had already brushed past this incredible mushroom without knowing they were rubbing elbows with a true delicacy of the forest? How many didn’t even stop to admire its ornate, even outlandish form? We left some for those who do notice such things.

The bear’s head is best simply sauteed in butter. Cook it longer and more gently (i.e. lower heat) than other mushrooms or it will be chewy. The taste is nutty, complex, a bit like cooked crab, as is the texture. Some mycophagists like to make faux crab cakes with it. Cora sauteed this one with both shallots and garlic and served it with a grilled halibut fillet topped with cherry tomato salsa.

Crustaceans of the Land: the Lobster Mushroom

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THE LOBSTER mushroom (Hypomyces lactifluorum) is actually a combination of two fungi, with one parasitizing the other. In the PNW, the short-stemmed russula (Russula brevipes) is the host, a rather unexceptional mushroom. When parasitized by the lobster, however, it’s transformed into a day-glo orange delight, with firm white flesh and a slightly marine scent and taste. The lobster attacks while the host is still developing underground, sometimes twisting it into tortured shapes and covering the gills until they are nearly undefined, as you can see in the image above.

There are a couple of potential downsides to lobsters. First, depending on where they’re fruiting, they usually require lots of cleaning. The rough, parasitized surface collects duff and dirt like a magnet, and the strange shapes can sometimes trap soil deep in contorted clefts and cavities. Second, bugs like the mushrooms as much as we do. Slice open a lobster and you might be confronted with a maggot-riddled interior. Luckily, mine were almost entirely bug-free.

I like making the classic French dish duxelles with lobsters. The contrast of the outer orange and inner white looks almost like lump crab meat, and the taste of the lobsters is perfect for this dish. Duxelles was reputedly created by famous French chef François Pierre La Varenne (1615–1678), author of Le cuisinier françois and one of the first to codify French cuisine, in honor of his boss, Nicolas Chalon du Blé, marquis d’Uxelles.

Lobster Mushroom Duxelles

1 lb lobster mushrooms, cleaned and finely diced
1-2 shallots, finely diced
1/2 cup or more heavy cream
parsley, chopped
fresh herbs, chopped
cognac
butter
salt and pepper

Saute diced shallot in butter until translucent. Add lobsters and cook on medium-high until the mushrooms have expelled all their water, 5 to 7 minutes. Season with salt and pepper to taste. Deglaze with a splash of cognac. Slowly stir in cream along with whatever herbs you like and simmer until desired thickness. Garnish with chopped parsley.

Serve duxelles over thinly sliced baguette or mash into a paste for Beef Wellington and other recipes.

Chicken and Chanterelles in Tomato Madeira Sauce

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THIS IS A SIMPLE recipe for when you’ve been out all day foraging and get home late—but still want to enjoy your fresh bounty.

4 thin chicken cutlets
flour
butter
2 tbsp olive oil
1 shallot, finely diced
2 cloves garlic, finely diced
1/2 pound chanterelles, sliced
2 tbsp tomato paste
madeira wine
8 oz shaped pasta like penne
parsley, chopped

1. Saute diced shallot and garlic in olive oil. Add chopped chanterelles and cook until mushrooms release their water. Season to taste. Meanwhile add penne pasta to salted boiling water.

2. Add 2 tablespoons of tomato paste to mushroom sauce and stir. In a separate pan, sauté thin, floured  chicken cutlets in butter.

3. Finish tomato-chanterelle sauce with madeira wine and add water as necessary.

4. Serve chicken over pasta and ladle sauce on top. Garnish with chopped parsley.

Now that’s antipasti!

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In the continuing saga of the Great Frozen Porcini Investigation, we took a new tack yesterday and eschewed defrosting altogether. Instead, the prime porcini buttons were exhumed from their chilly hibernation and cast directly into a red-hot skillet in the oven. Talk about going from the ice tray to the toaster.

With a little olive oil to smooth the transition, the porcini baked for 15 minutes by themselves at 400 degrees before the rest of the ingredients joined the party: our first zucchini from the garden, red pepper, and garlic. This colorful assortment roasted in their juices together for another 15 minutes before being turned and showered with fresh thyme and seasoned with salt and pepper. Another fifteen minutes and it was ready: homemade antipasti to go with the wild boar sausage I’d picked up earlier in the day at our local Italian deli.

In all truth, it would take an expert porcini palate to discern these beauties as previously frozen. Tender but not without resiliency, they evinced little of the water-logged sliminess that is characteristic of a defrosted mushroom, and the taste was mildly nutty as one would expect. While my first experiment was not exactly a mandate for freezing porcini buttons, in the future I will definitely assign a few batches of buttons to the cooler if only to have fresh-tasting roasted porcini all year long.

Stay tuned for another experiment soon.

Fettucini with Porcini, Garlic & Parmesan

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I defrosted my first batch of frozen porcini today. As regular readers will recall, just before leaving town for a summer retreat in the Rockies, FOTL took in a haul of fresh spring porcini from the North Cascades, most of it consisting of prime buttons just emerging from the duff. In the past I’ve dried all my excess porcini, but this time I vacuum-sealed and froze the best specimens.

Well, the jury is still mostly out on the freezer technique, but this is what I’ve learned so far. Thawed porcini is nothing like fresh. (No kidding!) I left the mushrooms on paper towels at room temperature. In the picture at left you can see hints of frost on them and even the textured impression of the bag. Almost immediately the porcini started sweating, getting progressively slimier. My hopes were not high. (Next time I might leave them in their sealed bag and defrost overnight in the fridge.)

Despite the puddles of water forming around my precious porcini, they succumbed to the knife rather nicely (though not as crisply as fresh) and the interiors were still happily white for the most part. When it came time to cook the porcini, I decided to raise the heat and saute them longer than I would have otherwise, just to make sure excesss moisture was cooked out and the mushrooms got a crisp edge. This raised a few problems that required kitchen improvisation. The high stove temp meant I needed to de-glaze, so I added a quick pour of vermouth (white wine would have been a better choice); lacking a lemon, I squeezed in some lime for a kick of citrus (again, not optimum). A pat of butter near the end added more opportunity for de-glazing. At this point I added the fettucini to the pan and cut the heat.

The verdict on the first phase of the Great Frozen Porcini Test? Extra cooking helped render the previously frozen porcini into a state that—if not as flavorful—at least superficially resembled the outcome of cooked fresh. Also, because spring porcini is milder than other variants later in the season, I might choose the fall fungi in the future for this subtle dish.

1/8 cup olive oil
2 cups diced porcini
1 tbsp chopped garlic
vermouth
1 tbsp butter
9 oz fresh fettucini
1/4 cup grated parmesan
sprig of fresh thyme, chopped
lemon zest
salt & pepper to taste

Saute porcini in oil until lightly browned; meanwhile add pasta to pot of boiling water. Add garlic to mushrooms and cook another minute or two. De-glaze with white wine or vermouth. Melt in butter, then stir in cooked pasta along with grated parmesan, lemon zest, and spices. Serves 2.

Rocky Mt. Forage

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We’re still on sabbatical in the Colorado Rockies. While the emphasis has been on R&R, a few local forage treats have been duly noted.

We’re still early for the great fruiting of king boletes that graces these mountains in summer, but Ruby found an aspen bolete on one of her flower walks with Mom. These members of the Leccinum genus (known for their scabrous stems) are myccorhizal with—you guessed it—aspen, which we have in good quantities around here. Though traditionally considered fairly choice, there are recent records in Colorado of gastric distress and hospital visits associated with these boletes, and given our remote locale we opted to admire it with eyes only.

As for the plant kingdom, we’re overrun by carrot family umbels (Apiaceae). The family known for striking aromatics such as parsley, fennel, celery, dill, cumin, and so on is a forager’s dream and nightmare—dream for flavor, nightmare for identification. As with certain mushrooms, a nibble on the wrong carrot can be fatal. Just ask Socrates. Poison hemlock is in the carrot family, as is water hemlock. Even choice edibles like cow parsnip come with strings attached, with the particular string in this case being a phototoxin that reacts in ultraviolet light and can cause burning rashes if its juice contacts skin in sunlight.

Speaking of cow parsnip, damp meadows and creek banks are loaded with Heracleum maximum right now. When sliced off below the bulb and peeled, the stem makes an unusual addition to salads and stir-fries, with a complex, almost sweet flavor and a celery-like crunch. As pointed out in an earlier video post, cow parsnip is not for everyone.

A hike along Silver Creek revealed meadows blooming with another umbel, what we think is wild caraway (Carum carvi), or a close relative. In general it’s a good idea to avoid any member of the carrot family unless you’re absolutely sure of the identity, but in this case we were able to rule out the real baddies and felt confident enough to try a taste. The umbels were already fruiting in sunnier spots, and we picked the seed-like fruits and chewed them along the trail. The flavor of licorice was distinctive.

Yarrow (Achillea millefolium) has just started to bloom at our elevation in the past week. Yarrow has been used for centuries to make medicinal teas for various ailments, including colds and flues.

Of course, if it’s protein you’re after, the Rockies offer superb big-game hunting in fall and more storied trout streams than an angler can hope to shake a rod at in a lifetime. In the next installment before our return to the PNW, I’ll have footage of local brookie action.

The Prince of Summer

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For me, the beginning of summer is marked by the emergence of Agaricus augustus, the Prince mushroom, which I generally start finding at the end of June. The Prince’s domain extends over cities, suburbs, and rural roadsides. It’s fond of parks and gardens. I found this specimen beside an old logging track, where it was growing alone. Sometimes they fruit in clumps, and they can be quite large, with caps the size of dinner plates, which means a single Prince can make a meal.

A distinguishing feature of the Prince is its unusually strong scent: the almondy smell of anise. Personally, I find this aroma to be overpowering at times, so I make sure not to cook the Prince in a savory recipe that will clash with the sweet, anise-like flavor. I found this out the hard way, once stuffing ginormous Prince caps with Italian sausage, breadcrumbs, sage, parsley, and egg; what should have been a stellar meal was compromised by the too-sweet flavor of the mushrooms. A red sauce over pasta is a better use of the Prince, with the chopped mushrooms obviating any need for a pinch of sugar.

Buttoned Up

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You say you didn’t land any spring kings despite the fisheries biologists’ predictions of a banner year? Me neither. But spring Chinook are not the only kings of the season. The fungal kingdom has its own spring royalty—king boletes—and though the exact species name is up for grabs, we can all agree that what the Italians simply call porcini is out there on the East Slope of the Cascades and Sierra Nevada right now.

I love hunting for spring kings and I love eating them. In Washington these mushrooms seem to be most prevalent around true firs, although experience shows that certain hardwoods can be important too. They start popping as early as April in California and Oregon, but here in Washington I don’t bother checking my patches until June, usually as the morel harvest is waning. Queen’s cup lilies are a good indicator for timing.

Professional foragers grade their mushrooms for market. No. 3’s are the big mature kings that can be spotted even from a speeding car. Also called “flags,” they’re often useful beacons for finding the more desirable no. 2’s and no. 1’s. The former have just emerged from the duff and are still firm, with convex caps and white pores underneath the cap; the latter are harder to see because they’re still in the “button” phase underground, with caps that have just started to open. A trained eye can see the mounded duff that buttons push up, known as “mushrumps” to hungry mycophagists. Hunting for no. 1 buttons is good sport.

Here’s a video that shows the habitat and the progression of looking for spring kings, from flag to button:

While I usually dry my excess boletes for later use in soups and stews, apparently you can freeze the buttons, so this year I’ve vacuum-sealed and frozen about 10 pounds of porcini buttons. I’ll post the results after thawing and cooking the first batch later this summer when the flush is over.

In the meantime, I’ll be eating fresh porcini with morning eggs, sauteed for lunch sandwiches, and prepared in all manner of ways for dinner, from pasta sauces to grilled to stewed. Their meatiness and nutty-woodsy flavor make porcini one of the great treats in all of fungaldom.

Camp Food

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Been out hiking, camping, and enjoying the spring pageantry (ok, so it’s officially summer now, but it’s still spring in the mountains). Oh, and harvesting a bunch of ‘shrooms. The morel flush continues at higher altitudes and the spring king boletes are coming on strong. Meaty mushrooms like morels and porcini make for good eats in camp, transforming a simple dish of rice, romano cheese, and cream into something a little more special.

I’ll have more to say about finding spring porcini in my next post.

The Professional

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My head is still reeling. I got to hang out with a professional forager on Monday. Unfortunately, I can’t divulge much more than that right now, but I’ll say this: my own knowledge could fit in with the dirt and duff under his left pinky nail.

Making your living as a forager is unbelievably hard work. Most professionals—and I use the term loosely—are recent immigrants, legal and otherwise, who are willing to do this seasonal, mercurial, back-breaking work for wages that average out, in most cases, to the minimum. Then there are those who either shun society or want to work in the woods. A very small percentage are making it their daily career and being well compensated. This forager was in the latter category.

Together we scouted some of his spring porcini patches in a casual, day-off sort of way, filling a couple buckets just the same with no. 1 buttons and a bunch of coral to boot. That’s about all I can say for now. I’m writing a piece on our day together and will supply more details at a later date.

Pasta with Porcini in Sage Butter

When I got home I took one of my porcini and chopped it up and sauteed it for a few minutes in sage butter (a couple tbsp of hot melted butter that is just starting to brown, with crispy fried sage leaves), then poured over penne. Garnished with chopped parsley and grated parm. Simple and delicious. Don’t be surprised, though, if your spring porcini is milder than the fall variety.