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Stuffed and otherwise

Going wild over mushrooms

It seems that just about everybody on earth knows the multi-dimensional pleasures of edible wild mushrooms – everybody that is except us, and maybe the Americans. The Italians have their porcini, the French their vaunted truffles, the Japanese and First Nations people, their pine mushrooms, and the worldly but practical eastern Europeans, well, they pick and enjoy whatever edible wild mushrooms they can wherever they live.

In fact, it was her Hungarian godmother who first opened up the possibilities of wild mushrooms for a 10-year-old Ophra Buckman as she cleaned and sorted them on the balcony of her Montreal apartment. But it took the Polish grandfather of her best friend to teach her the wonder of gathering wild mushrooms in the Eastern Townships of Quebec some 25 years ago.

"He showed us what to look for and we all disappeared into the woods – it was so beautiful just wandering around, looking for them," Ophra recalls. "But when my girlfriend and I showed him what we had gathered in our baskets, he threw them all out, every last one of them. ‘They’re all no good,’ he said."

Point one about gathering wild mushrooms well taken.

But that didn’t deter her, and if anyone in the Whistler valley has rightfully earned the name "the mushroom lady" it’s Ophra. A cook and baker who was one of the original partners in Auntie Em’s Kitchen in Village North, Ophra has gone on to become an informal but well-informed consultant on the various wild mushrooms found in the Whistler area.

Her friend’s European cleaning lady phones: I’ve got all these wild porcinis I found. Do you want some? Another friend of a friend knocks on her door with a bag of mushrooms in hand: are these good to eat? Yes (they were chanterelles).

If you missed last weekends Fungus Among Us mushroom festival, sponsored by the Whistler Naturalists, you missed Ophra in her finest hour. She showed some 40 lucky participants how to make her creamy soup made with pine mushrooms, her savoury mushroom strudel, stuffed with spinach, sour cream, mustard, asiago cheese and gypsy mushrooms, and her wilted spinach salad set off by a rich miso dressing and hedgehog mushrooms.

And then, like a magical cooking show where everything is miraculously done in an instant, she trotted out samples of same for everyone to taste – in some cases, two or three or four samples of each, they were so popular. (If you missed the demo, you can find the recipes at Nesters Market, which offers the best and most consistent supply of wild mushrooms in the valley.)

In case all that wasn’t exciting enough for wild mushroom lovers like Ophra, the two expert mycologists brought in for the weekend, Andy Mackinnon and Paul Kreoger, led participants on a mushroom walk. In a few short hours, the group gathered 81 different species of wild mushrooms.

Believe it or not, the wild mushrooms in this area have not been officially classified. For Andy and Paul, who have taken all 81 species back to Vancouver Island to undertake same, it was like unearthing the lost treasure of the Sierra Madre. While the 81 species aren’t all edible, it gives you some idea of the variety of wild mushrooms found in the Whistler area.

By now you must be almost as curious about wild mushrooms as that young girl back in Montreal was. Until spring, when the next mushroom season arises, here are a few favourites from Ophra to keep your appetite whetted.

Pine mushrooms: A strong distinctive piney flavour, with strong overtones of spice and cinnamon. Good grilled, with a bit of lemon and/or soy sauce, in pasta sauces with onion and garlic, or dried, as First Nations people do, and used as a seasoning. The taste for these is a somewhat acquired, perhaps more easily when you know that a single No. 1 pine mushroom in Japan can fetch up to $100 U.S.

Chanterelles: big, delicious meaty mushrooms with a slight apricot scent and a flavour that defies description. The mushroom world is divided 50/50 between chanterelle lovers and porcini lovers. Delicious with chicken and in egg dishes, like a fritatta.

Morels: truly delicious with veal, lamb and beef in a red wine sauce. The larger of the species are suitable for stuffing.

Hedgehog mushrooms: Also meaty and delicious, with a peppery flavour. Work well with chicken, pork and egg dishes. Also very good with spinach.

Gypsy mushrooms: Delicate flavour, with ever so slight minty undertones. Very good with spinach and great in goulashes, soup or substitute in most mushroom recipes.

Porcini or the king bolete mushrooms: Porcini means "little piggy" in Italian and these babies do grow big. You can find porcini in the Whistler area weighing up to 600-800 grams apiece – that’s one big little piggy. Grill or saute thick slices and serve on toast, or in any soup or stew. They also dry and reconstitute well – some people swear the flavour is enhanced after drying. Use in all your favourite Italian dishes, just like the dried ones you get on Commercial Drive – only better.

SIDEBAR 1

The name game

Since wild mushrooming is such an individualized art, so are many of the preferred names. While the following may be a bone of contention, this list of scientific and common names of wild mushrooms most commonly found in B.C., (from a Forest Renewal B.C. report by R. M. Wills and R. G. Lipsey) will at least give you a jumping off point of reference for further research:

Cantharellus cibarius var. roseocanus

– Rainbow chanterelle

Cantharellus formosus

– Pacific golden chanterelle

Cantharellus subalbidus

– White chanterelle

Craterellus tubaeformis

– Winter chanterelle

Clitocybe nuda

– Blewit

Hydnum repandum

– Hedeghog mushroom

Hydnum umbilicatum

– Belly Button mushroom

Hypomyces lactifluorum

– Lobster mushroom

Lyophyllum decastes

– Fried chicken mushroom

Polyozellus multiplex

– Blue chanterelle

Sparassis crispa

– Cauliflower fungus

Tricholoma magnivelare

– Pine mushroom

SIDEBAR2:

Go wild, just not in the woods

If you go out in the woods to go wild with mushrooms, your best bet is to hitch up with a knowledgeable expert like Ophra, not only to identify them properly, but also to understand how and why you need to treat the mushrooms, and their habitat, with respect.

"My biggest pet peeve is coming upon a bunch of mushrooms people have kicked over because they don’t know what they are," says Ophra. That’s second only to finding big areas raked up, likely by hunters of pine mushrooms who want to hurriedly clear the moss and needles to reveal their hidden treasures – the pine mushrooms beneath.

Mushrooms are the "fruit" of a fungus that lives unseen in the soil or duff on the forest floor. This underground portion of a fungus is a root-like network called a mycelium. Often this mycelium is interconnected with the roots of a living tree. The mycelium annually produces spore-bearing bodies, the mushrooms. The spores produced by the mushrooms germinate in the soil when conditions are right and establish new mycelia in the forest.

When you harvest mushrooms, it is SO important that you don’t harm the mycelium that produces the mushroom. Undamaged, and with favourable weather conditions, the fungus will produce a crop each year. No wonder serious mushroom pickers don’t reveal their secret spots.

Even if you do learn from an expert, it takes years to become fully knowledgeable. Different soil and habitat conditions, combined with different weather conditions from year to year, can produce different results, both in terms of where wild mushrooms grow and how they look. So consult more than one mushroom field guide to compare species descriptions and distinguish them from potentially dangerous look-alikes.

The following points from the Forest Practices Branch of the B.C. Forest Service are both practical and helpful:

By using proper harvest techniques, you can get the best possible recovery of mushrooms by protecting the fungus, which produces the mushrooms:

• Pick or cut mushrooms one by one.

• Don’t rake or otherwise disturb the forest floor.

• Pick only the mushrooms you can use. Broken, overmature or wormy mushrooms may still be spreading spores.

• Do not remove or disturb moss layers where more mushrooms are continuously growing.

• Check the identity of your mushrooms with an experienced harvester, buyer or biologist.

Before entering any lands to pick mushrooms in B.C., be sure of the ownership of the land and your right to pick mushrooms there:

Mushroom picking permitted:

Provincial forest lands

Mushroom picking requires permission:

First Nations’ land, Tree Farm Licences, Regional parks, Leased Crown land, Private land

Mushroom picking not permitted:

National parks, Defense lands, Provincial parks, Ecological or special reserves, Recreation areas

Don’t forget your first aid kit and all your other good backcountry sense.

SIDEBAR 3 :

Best bets for your mushrooming interests

For both I.D. references and recipes…

Edible Wild Mushrooms of North America: A Field to Kitchen Guide, by David W. Fischer and Alan E. Bessette

For the bible on mushrooms pick up…

Mushrooms Demystified, by David Arora

Also by the same author, an easy-to-carry pocket guidebook, perfect for Sea to Sky country… All That the Rain Promises and More.

And don’t forget the reliable, The National Audubon Society Guide to Wild Mushrooms (North America).

Or visit:

www.nature-exploration.com

www.vancouverislandmycologistsociety.com