Category Archives: Fungi

Frozen Matsutake

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I found two frosty packages in the back of the freezer the other day: matsutake buttons, four of them. According to the labels, I had picked them in October, 2010. Two years in the deep freeze!

 

The matsi were individually wrapped in foil. One pair was sealed in a Ziploc, the other pair vacuum-sealed. With an open bottle of sake in the fridge, I knew immediately the culinary experiment I was about to perform—Matsutake Sukiyaki.

I sort of remember my thinking at the time, two years ago. I had read somewhere that you could freeze firm matsutake buttons, that this was preferable to drying. Maybe someone at Puget Sound Mycological Society had recommended the technique. I had made similar experiments with porcini buttons years earlier. For whatever reason, wrapping the matsi buttons in foil was a required step. It seemed to me the best way to defrost them would be directly in the soup broth. I unwrapped the foil to find, luckily, that I had carefully cleaned the buttons and trimmed the stems before freezing. They looked a little darker but otherwise in good condition. I could smell the signature “autumn aroma” even in their cryogenic state.

 

And the result? The thawed mushrooms definitely imparted their essence of “red hots and dirty socks” to the soup—not as much as fresh specimens, but more than dried matsutake. The main problem was that the mushrooms were prohibitively chewy. After thawing in the soup, I removed and sliced them; next time I will either slice the thawed matsi razor-thin or cut into bite-sized pieces. As it was, I only ate the smaller slices. The main benefit to the sukiyaki was flavor rather than texture.

My experiments are not over. I still need to test the vacuum-sealed pair of buttons, and next time I’ll try not to lose them in the freezer for more than a few months. Overall, I’d say the results are encouraging for matsutake fans who want to experience the mushroom’s unique taste year-round.

A Forager’s Thanksgiving

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Here in the Pacific Northwest, we’re lucky to have a climate that allows for foraging year-round, even during the dark, wet days of late fall and winter. If you’re hoping to include a few wild foods in your Thanksgiving feast, keep reading…

Wild Mushrooms

By late November, those of us in Washington need to think more strategically about our mushroom hunting spots. The bread-and-butter golden chanterelle harvest is mostly done by this time, the surviving specimens oversized, floppy, and waterlogged. Skiers own the mountains now and even many low-elevation habitats should be ruled out because of recurring hard frosts. Head for the coast or the southern Olympic Peninsula and look for microclimates where fungi can persist. Search out those hardier winter species such as yellowfoot chanterelles and hedgehogs. Hint: they prefer moist, mossy forests and plenty of woody decay.

If you’re willing to travel, make tracks for southwestern Oregon where kings and matsutake are still available. My favorite this time of year, though, is the black trumpet, which is just starting to fruit and can be found in mixed forests with oak. Sautéed in a little butter, it tastes just like fall.

Shellfish

We’re coming into the high time for shellfish. The summer spawn is over and the clams, mussels, oysters, and crabs are putting meat back in their shells, rather than using their fat reserves for reproduction.

Many a Nor’westerner likes to give a regional twist to the Turkey Day dinner, including a shellfish course of soup or stew, or simply a mess of Dungeness crabs on the table to kick off the proceedings. I try to dive for my crabs when I can, though the seafood market is a dry alternative. One year I made a Dungie crab bisque for twenty. It was time-consuming peeling all that crab—I’d recommend shelling out (pardon the pun) for lump crab meat instead—but oh so decadent and delicious. Unfortunately, by the time the labor-intensive bisque was ready, I think many of us were too deep into a Northwest wine tasting to fully appreciate it.

An elegant, tomato-based shellfish stew in the Italian tradition is a great way to charm your guests and add European flair to the American meal. I make one chock full of clams, mussels, shrimp, scallops, and squid (note: Seattle’s public fishing pier is host to a multi-lingual party of midnight squidders this time of year that is not to be missed). You can find my shellfish stew recipe in Fat of the Land. Or try a simple New England-style Clam Chowder, of which I have a couple recipes, here and here. Steamed littleneck clams can be easily gathered and prepared in minutes. A splash of white with a few sprigs of parsley and couple smashed garlic cloves is all it takes, or you can add a bit more prep time for Clams with Herbed Wine Sauce. Don’t forget crusty bread for dipping.

The South Sound and Hood Canal are good options for digging littleneck clams and picking oysters, while razor clam digs on the sandy ocean beaches are a time-honored way to stock the larder. In Oregon, Tillamook and Netarts bays are popular with clam diggers. Check the state Fish & Wildlife web sites for information on beach openings and limits.

Greens

Some of our spring weeds reappear in fall with the cool weather. One of the better bets is wild watercress, which can be gathered in quantity and tastes so much better than its domesticated counterpart. Spice up your green salad with watercress, pair it with wild mushrooms in a stuffing, or make a soup or side dish with it.

Berries

We’re lucky to have a dozen varieties of huckleberry in Washington and Oregon. Our late ripening variety is the evergreen huckleberry, Vaccinium ovatum, and it’s often available right around Thanksgiving. Of all the huckleberries, it’s one of the easiest to pick, with sweet berries that can be pulled off the branches in bunches, so get your fill, though be warned: as with our fall mushrooms, this is not a good evergreen huckleberry year. Should you find some, there’s nothing better than a huckleberry pie or cobbler to put an exclamation mark on a wild Thanksgiving meal.

Wild Mushroom and Root Vegetable Gratin

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THIS AUTUMN GRATIN has a nice balance between the savoriness of the pork with the sweetness of the chanterelles and parsnips, and a textural continuum that starts creamy and finishes with a pleasant crunch.

Next time I make this dish I might not bother to blanche the root vegetables; they’re cut small enough to soften between the initial pan-cooking and the final baking. Also, I’ll make sure the breadcrumbs are not so fine for added crunchiness. Overall, this is a definite keeper and a great use for chanterelles, which should be used generously.

1 cup celery root, cut into 1/2-inch cubes
1 cup parsnip, cut into rounds and half-rounds
1 loose cup salt pork, cut into 1/2-inch cubes
1 leek, white part only, diced
1 lb wild mushrooms, roughly chopped
1 cup vegetable stock
1/2 cup mascarpone
1 tbsp butter
1 cup shredded chard
1 tbsp fresh thyme
fresh nutmeg
olive oil for sauté

1. Blanche celery root and parsnip in boiling water for a few minutes, until not quite fork tender. Drain and set aside. Note: this step can be omitted if root vegetables are cut to specification.

2. Meanwhile, sauté salt pork in a lightly oiled pan over medium heat, allowing fat to render and meat to brown until edges are crispy.

3. Add diced leek and cook together until soft.

4. Add wild mushrooms and cook several minutes, until mushrooms release their water and all liquid is cooked off. Remove mixture to a bowl.

5. In same pan, melt butter over medium heat and add blanched root vegetables. Cook until lightly browned, turning a few times with a spatula.

6. Return pork-leek-mushroom mixture to pan. Add vegetable stock and allow to cook down. Next add mascarpone and stir together. Mix in shredded chard. Season with thyme and several gratings of nutmeg. Adjust for salt. Consistency should be creamy, even slightly soupy. Increase stock or mascarpone if necessary.

7. Spoon into greased ramekins, cover with breadcrumbs (preferable homemade), and bake at 375 degrees for 20 minutes, checking to make sure top doesn’t burn.

Makes 4 small ramekins. Serve with good bread and defibrillator.

Matsutake and Shellfish Soup

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THIS IS A DISH I once had at Idle Wylde, the home of Foraged and Found Edibles proprietor Jeremy Faber. In typical fashion, he didn’t even remember making it when, later, I asked for the recipe. I reminded him it included manila clams, matsutake, and leeks.

“Makes sense,” he said, “matsi and shellfish go together.” So I made my own version and the result was equally good. 

1/2 lb matsutake mushrooms (or more), sliced
1 lb littleneck clams in the shell, scrubbed
1 lb mussels, scrubbed and de-bearded
2 leeks, white part only, sliced
1 tbsp peanut oil
1 cup sake
1 cup chicken stock
1 scallion, thinly sliced for garnish

 

1. Saute sliced leeks in peanut oil in heavy-bottomed pot over medium heat, 2 minutes.

2. Add matsutake and cook together another couple minutes, stirring occasionally. Add sake and chicken stock and allow to simmer together a few minutes so the broth absorbs the singular matsi flavor.

3. Raise heat to high, add shellfish, and cover. Remove from heat when the clams and mussels have opened, careful not to overcook. Ladle into bowls and garnish with sliced scallion.

Serves 2 for dinner, or 4 as an appetizer.

Foraging’s Golden Rule

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It happens every year. Someone eats poisonous mushrooms and winds up in the hospital—or worse. Then I get well-meaning emails from concerned friends and acquaintances.

This fall a Connecticut woman poisoned her whole family. Reports say the mushrooms she picked in her back yard and fed to her husband and two daughters was the notorious Destroying Angel, Amanita bisporigera (pictured at top). If that’s true, the family got off lucky. Three of them were released from medical care last week with their own livers. A fourth remained in the hospital, and—lucky for her—was being treated with silibinin, an experimental drug widely used in Europe and only recently available in the U.S.

The toxins in deadly Amanitas such as the Destroying Angel and the Death Cap (Amanita phalloides) inhibit cell production in the liver and kidneys. Symptoms often don’t occur until several hours after ingestion and include vomiting and severe abdominal pain, followed by liver and kidney failure, hepatic coma, and death. There is no antidote. Patients are typically treated with charcoal solutions. Silibinin, made from an extract of milk thistle, seems to have antihepatotoxic properties—that is, it protects liver and kidney cells from toxins—and looks to be the most promising cure at the moment.

Great new experimental drugs aside, the best cure is to not eat poisonous mushrooms in the first place! Stories like this scare people. But it’s still possible to enjoy the many pleasures of mycophagy (mushroom eating) without a trip to the hospital and a long recovery. Simply observe foraging’s golden rule: never eat anything that you can’t identify without 100 percent certainty.

To learn the skills of mushroom identification, take a class, join a mycological society, go into the field with a trusted mentor. Learn key field characteristics by studying actual mushrooms with mushroom experts—not by looking at pictures in field guides. Respect the limits of your knowledge. Some species are easy to learn. Chanterelles, porcini, and morels are among our tastiest wild mushrooms and relatively easy to identify. Other species require more skill. Go slow and enjoy the process.

The consequences of blithely nibbling your way through the wild are too grave. For another Halloween mushroom scare fest, read this harrowing account of a near-fatal encounter with the Destroying Angel.

Photo at top by Cornell Fungi.

Steak and Chanterelle Stroganoff

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COMFORT FOOD WITH foraged mushrooms.

6 tbsp butter, divided
1 lb top sirloin, thinly sliced
1/3 cup shallots, chopped
1 lb chanterelles, sliced
1 cup sour cream
1 tbsp Dijon mustard
1/2 cup white wine
splash cognac
salt and pepper
tarragon
paprika
fresh parsley, chopped

1. Season beef with salt and pepper, then sauté in 3 tablespoons butter over medium heat in a large saucepan, cooking a minute or two before turning for another minute or two. Be careful not to overcook the beef. Remove to a bowl.

2. Sauté shallots in same pan until translucent, a couple minutes. Remove to same bowl with beef.

3. Add remaining butter to pan and sauté chanterelles several minutes. De-glaze with wine and cognac.

4. Reduce heat to low and add sour cream and mustard. Stir in a pinch of dried tarragon (or a loose tablespoon of chopped fresh). Return beef and shallots to pan and cook together another couple minutes before serving.

5. Serve over egg noodles. Garnish with paprika and parsley.

 

On Weather and Mushrooms

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It rained last night. Alas, Seattle didn’t break its record for longest stretch without precip—51 days in the summer of 1951—but we came close at 48 days. Let the mushrooms rejoice.

A professional forager I know likes to stake out contrarian positions on just about every aspect of his profession. Rain, or lack thereof, is one of his favorite topics. When it comes to fungi, he says temperature is more important than moisture for most of the edible species.

This is a nuanced argument, so stay with me here. He concedes that moisture is important for volume, but it doesn’t affect the timing as much as most recreational mushroom hunters believe. Yes, there are individual species that won’t fruit without a timely rain (take a bow, fall mountain porcini), but while many hunters wait for their beloved precipitation, their patches are right on schedule, or at least quality patches in good habitats are on schedule. Marginal patches will always be adversely affected by any number of poor conditions.

The bottom line, he says, is that weather in the Pacific Northwest is more consistent than most people think, despite the usual claims of oddball this-and-that. “We get rain in June and our Septembers are usually nice.” It rarely rains in August and November is always wet.

He proved his theory by taking me to a lobster mushroom patch at the end of August, just when Seattlites started getting an inkling that this dry spell was making a run for the record books. Despite the parched conditions, the lobsters looked prosperous—not as abundant as in some years, but large, bug-free, and delicious. (We also picked white chanterelles, which I’ll post about another day.)

I wrote about lobster mushrooms in my September column for Seattle Magazine. Every season they rise a little more in my estimation, and my own personal appreciation seems to be in parallel with the larger culinary community because you see them on more and more restaurant menus year after year—and their value in the marketplace continues to grow.

Pan-seared Scallops with Lobster Mushrooms, Lobster Sauce & Indian Spices

To make this harvest season dish with its colors of late summer and early fall, plate a trio of pan-seared scallops over a bed of roasted vegetables and fungi—in this case, cubed butternut squash, sliced leeks, and diced lobster mushrooms—and punch it up with a drizzle of lobster sauce—that is, sauce made from the crustacean. With their hint of the sea, I like pairing lobster mushrooms with seafood.

I made a simple lobster sauce with lobster stock I had in the freezer. As a cup of the stock warmed in a pot, I made a quick roux with two tablespoons of melted butter and two tablespoons of flour, whisking until the roux began to darken to a nice golden color. Then I stirred in the stock until it was saucy. This made enough sauce for two. I roasted the squash, leeks, and mushrooms with olive oil and seasoned with salt and pepper and a healthy sprinkling of garam masala, baking at 400 degrees until the edges of the leeks and squash browned lightly. A scattering of chopped fresh cilantro completed the dish.

Mushroom Hunting in China and Eastern Tibet

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I met a self-proclaimed globetrotter at a barbecue the other day who told me that in a lifetime of traveling he’d never been to the Far East. That’s funny, I said to him, because I just got back from China. He wasn’t impressed. “The Chinese can have it,” he said sourly. “It’s their century anyway.”

The old codger may be right about the 21st century being stamped with Chinese characters, though I’m at a loss to explain how a so-called “lifetime of traveling” translates into such a narrow world view. Maybe if George W. Bush had spent more time on foreign soil—rather than extolling his own provincialism—he might not have made such a mess of things in the White House. There’s one way to gain a better understanding of the world and its people: by crossing borders.

My recent trip took me to southwestern China and the Tibetan Plateau. The lens through which I glimpsed these places was fungi.  Mushroom season is in full swing in the monsoon-soaked highlands and I wanted to see for myself a mushroom hunting scene that has been described as one of the busiest anywhere, with economic implications that stretch far and wide. Daniel Winkler, a member of the Puget Sound Mycological Society and proprietor of Mushroaming, was my cheerful, indefatigable tour guide (besides an encyclopedic knowledge of local custom and natural history, the guy speaks enough Tibetan to hang out with nomadic yak herders).

You’ll have to take my word for it when I say that I survived adventures this July to fill a book—or  at least a lengthy essay. Much of it I’m still trying to process. China is big, jam-packed with people, and not a little overwhelming. I’ve got work ahead to bring into focus my thousands of photos, hours of audio/video, and copious notes. In the meantime, allow me to share a little of the itinerary and some accompanying images.

The trip started in Chengdu, capital of Sichuan Province, where the region’s infatuation with everything fungal was on display, at a price. Local pharmacies showed off wild medicinals such as reishi (pictured above) and Cordyceps sinensis, the caterpillar fungus. Should you seek these time-honored curatives, be prepared to open your wallet. One member of our party paid 480 rmb (about $75 US) for a dozen of the desiccated larvae of the ghost moth with their fungal parasites (called yartsa gunbu in Tibetan, with a reputation for restoring the humors, enhancing sexual prowess, and even producing Olympic Gold Medalists)—and she got a deal!

Mushrooms are widely eaten as food in the Far East, too. Restaurants in big cities and small towns alike routinely include both cultivated and wild varieties on their menus. One of the best meals of the trip was at this tiny restaurant (above) near Ya’an on the road to Kangding, where we dined on wood-ear and oyster mushrooms cooked to order by a wok-master and his wife. One of the many fun (and different) things about eating in China is seeing all the meat and produce on display in the restaurant’s glass-cased cooler; reading the menu for most of us westerners is an impossibility but one can always point.

Our first day out of Chengdu we followed rivers that I’d never heard of, rivers that, to the naked eye, would seem to dwarf the Skagit or even the Sacramento. The Red Basin is famous as the bread-basket of China, and it’s easy to see why when you start counting the major water courses that flow into it, including the 2,000-year-old irrigation diversion at Dujiangyan. There’s an unbelievable amount of water pouring out of mountains that seem to go on forever, especially during monsoon season.

We gained steady elevation, finally topping out at 8,400 feet in Kangding, a smallish city by Chinese standards with about 100,000 souls at the confluence of the Tar and Chen river gorges. Despite its size, Kangding boasted more wild mushroom dealers than I’ve ever seen in one place. Matsutake commanded the highest price, at 80 to 100 rmb per pound for #1 and #2 buttons, while the local varieties of Caesar’s amanita (Amanita hemibapha) and king bolete (Boletus sp.) were going for as much as 25 rmb for prime specimens, such as these amanita eggs below.

Other species for sale included the Himalayan gypsy (Cortinarius emodensis, below); hawk’s wing (Sarcodon sp., below); Leccinum versipelle; Catathelasma imperialis; various boletes, russulas, and chanterelles; and a Tricholoma similar to man-on-horseback.

One night we taste-tested the gypsy side by side with the mystery Tricholoma (below). The latter was favored by some, though I must say I preferred the gypsy for both taste and texture and will be looking for this mushroom more in the future. The Chinese are known for their nose-to-tail eating habits, and this catholic taste spills over into their use of fungi. Species that I don’t usually associate with the marketplace in the U.S. (e.g. Catathelasma imperialis, various russulas, and hawk’s wings) are routinely sold and eaten in China. This is in keeping with the agricultural strategy; virtually every square inch of arable land is under cultivation. With 1.4 billion inhabitants, even a nation as geographically large as China must continually think about food production.

A few days (and hard miles) later, while our drivers played cards, we investigated a likely slice of matsutake habitat in the oak forests above Yajiang with the help of a young Tibetan and his aunt (pictured below).

Fresh divots in the forest floor told the story: we were too late. Matsutake is intensively hunted on the Tibetan Plateau and represents a significant source of income for many Tibetans. The only species more important is the caterpillar fungus. Later we came upon some successful hunters in the woods. As in the U.S. and elsewhere, the pressure to find matsutake leads to a market overflowing with tiny buttons (called peanuts in the Pacific Northwest). This is compounded by the Japanese preference for unopened caps. If the pickers allowed the mushrooms to grow even a little bit, they’d make more money, but competition is so stiff that the buttons are exhumed as soon as they’re spotted. Even a seasoned matsutake hunter from North America would find the level of competition fierce. On this particular day we ran into pickers everywhere, many of them charging up and down the rough mountain roads on motorcycles.

While waiting for a landslide to be cleared—one of the many monsoon-induced road closures that would plague our journey—we met a matsutake buyer who couldn’t contain himself. Though he spoke no English, he must have understood the gist of our conversation as we all waited impatiently beside the muddy jeep track. He grabbed hold of my sleeve and ushered me back to his minivan. As he yanked open the sliding door, I imagined jack-booted authorities jumping out to arrest me, but instead I found myself staring at a carload of mostly #1 matsutake buttons, maybe 500 pounds in all.

Our high point in terms of elevation was the town of Lithang, birthplace of two Dalai Lamas. At 4,014 meters (or more than 13,000 feet above sea level), it’s one of the highest towns in the world, though it wasn’t a high point for morale. Sleep and appetite suffered in the thin air. Outside the tourist town of Yading we caught a miraculous glimpse of Mt. Chenresig, the sacred Buddhist peak of compassion (6,032 meters), normally shrouded in cloud cover.

The drive from Daocheng to Shangri-la in Yunnan Province passed through miles of awe-inspiring territory. We came across a guy selling a basketful of matsutake out in the middle of nowhere. (Or, more likely, he was waiting for his usual buyer to motor by.) This was a signal to keep our eyes peeled, and sure enough, we rounded a bend and saw a mushroom camp in the distance.

According to the people running the makeshift local store, about forty pickers plus their families had set up the camp in the past week. Some were still moving in.

The temporary settlement, with its simple tents constructed from tarps and wooden stringers cut on site, reminded me of the matsutake camp near Chemult, Oregon. There was a lot of activity as the inhabitants collected wood, shored up their domiciles with brush, and laid in supplies.

Unfortunately there was no time to linger. We had to press on to Shangri-la, a dingy city in Yunnan Province that has appropriated the famous name from Lost Horizon for itself. Yunnan is well known for its wild mushroom trade. Not surprisingly, Shangri-la had a corner of real estate devoted to the buying and selling of precious fungi.

Over the course of the trip, our group had a chance to sample many species of local edible mushrooms that we found along the way, including boletes, blewetts, a beautiful sulfur shelf, and others. We brought them to little family restaurants where there was never a question as to whether the mushrooms were safe to eat. The people know their mushrooms. Only once did a cook remind us that the responsibility was all ours.

Though our trip was built around the foraging and commerce of mushrooms, we also spent welcome time identifying mountain flora, visiting towns along the route, and exploring Buddhist monasteries. Outside Shangri-la I had one last opportunity to hunt mushrooms in China before flying back to Chengdu—on the grounds of a monastery where, among a roving band of pigs, chickens, and goats, I found a pair of  perfect Amanita hemibapha eggs and a beautiful Amanita from the vaginata group in the shadow of Tibetan prayer flags, a fitting end to an exciting and educational mushroom hunt.

Spring Kings: Another Season, Another Lesson

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It’s getting a little late in the season to talk about spring kings, but it seems that every year I learn a little bit more about these tantalizing members of the bolete family that are so emblematic of the Kingdom of Fungi in general. For instance, even though it only received species designation in 2008, Boletus rex-veris has been picked and eaten by Italian-Americans for a hundred years. You can read the many spring porcini posts on this blog—from my first post to my experiments with freezing buttons to taxonomic clarity—as a record of my own progress.

Much of my understanding about how to cook and care for the the “little pigs” has been won through trial and error. There just isn’t an operating manuel. As you might recall, I started “field dressing” my porcini a couple years ago in an effort to keep them clean and to combat the bugs that are as boletivoracious as us. Boletus rex-veris, in contrast to B. edulis, does much of its growing underground, so it can be quite a dirty mushroom. Dirt and duff-covered mushrooms piled together in a basket or bucket will share their dirt like STDs, making for a difficult cleaning proposition at home, particularly with the pores under the cap. Wherever I happen to find them, I clean them up and check for insect infestations, taking precautions to cover up the scene of the capture when I’m finished.

Field dressing consists of trimming the stem of any dirt, cleaning the cap as thoroughly as possible, and finally slicing the mushroom in half to check for worms. Even seemingly pristine #1 buttons can have fly larvae in them that will make a mess in no time. If I see any bug activity (as in the image at right and a closeup below, showing the culprit), I slice it out with my knife. This often takes care of localized infestations and saves a mushroom that would otherwise be ruined before dinnertime.

And don’t be fooled. Bolete fly larvae can riddle a mushroom with their hungry tunneling in the time that it takes to drive your haul home from the mountains. As they warm up, the larvae become more active. Unless you crank your air conditioner, the temperature in your car will cause the bugs to stir. This isn’t too much of a problem provided you don’t dilly-dally along the way—and you get the mushrooms in the refrigerator asap.

Sometimes I’ll camp in the woods and spread my mushroom hunting over a couple days or more. Usually, when multiple species are fruiting at the height of the spring season, I’ll try to do my morel hunting at the beginning and save my porcini hunting for last. A load of porcini hanging around camp unrefrigerated is an invitation to disaster. A couple weeks ago I came home with several pounds of #1 and #2 buttons. It was cold and drizzly in Seattle and I was exhausted, so I left my basket of mushrooms on the front stoop overnight. Bad call. Even temps in the low-40’s aren’t cool enough. Plus, humidity is a killer. About half the load was beyond repair by the next day. Even a cold fridge doesn’t completely stop the worms in their tracks; it just slows them down (though I suspect a really cold fridge can prevent additional larvae from hatching).

I’ve been paying close attention to a recent batch. A few mushrooms that got field dressed and looked absolutely spotless before the drive home ended up having some noticeable tunneling within three hours of picking. Others that still looked perfect got sliced in half again (i.e. quartered) in my kitchen. This revealed minor bug activity that required immediate action. Finally, even mushrooms that passed with flying colors required checking after a day or two in the fridge, and some of these showed minor infestation. The point is, if you want to pick and eat porcini and not cook up a panful of maggots, you need to be vigilant.

The bolete below has the appearance of a #1 button. It was firm and didn’t show any signs of infestation when I trimmed the stem. I decided to keep it whole. After a week in the fridge, this is what it looked like. Look closely and you’ll see that the worms attacked via the cap, not the stem. If I had cut the mushroom in half when I picked it, I might have been able to isolate the infestation and save it.

If this is all too much for some folks, who don’t even want to think about extra protein in their food…well, mushroom hunting probably isn’t your cup of beef.

P.S. If you’re in British Columbia, I’d like to know whether you find B. rex-veris, and if so, how far north.

Porcini Bap

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IN 1998 I SPENT six months working in the UK, living in a flat in the dingy London suburb Slough (rhymes with cow) made famous by The Office (and, before that, by the poet laureate John Betjeman).

 

I watched—along with everyone else—BBC episodes of Delia Cooks, Ready Steady Cook, Two Fat Ladies, Nigel Slater, and ate extraordinary Indian food. On Sundays I would ride my bike through the countryside, pulling over for a pint every so often and eventually stopping to sup on afternoon roast before wobbling back home.

One of my favorite quick meals was a hot vegetarian sandwich that Nigel Slater calls a Bap. He roasts the caps of large field mushrooms with garlic butter and parsley. This simple sandwich is excellent. Besides the usual portobello, try it with a haul of wild porcini mushrooms.

To make the sandwich, pre-heat oven to 400 degrees. Chop together some garlic and parsley and mix into a large dollop of softened butter with a generous sprinkling of salt. Slather each inverted mushroom cap with the garlic butter and roast for about 20 minutes. When the mushrooms are cooked and starting to brown a little at the edges, you can melt some cheese such as provolone or mozzarella as a finishing touch.

Make sure to use good bread. When it’s time to assemble the sandwich, rub the cut ends of the bread in the pan juices. Nigel says a good Bap should drip down your hands and arms when you eat it. I concur.