Mushroom Picking ~ Mariella

Warning: Do not try this at home without the assistance of a professional! This post is not intended as a tutorial.

 A few years ago we bought a beat up ol’ van from a gypsy and traveled around Britain. We found the forest folk and animals to be friendlier than the town’s people and spent most of our time on the road, in lovely old villages and woodland areas. 

We read the Hobbit by candlelight in the evenings and left the fast paced world behind for a few months. I learnt to knit!

Another habit which stuck was mushroom hunting. My husband had been studying culinary mushroom for years and when Autumn kicked around we found ourselves surrounded by forests full of the types of edible varieties not available in South Africa. 

Wood Blewits

Cauliflower Fungus

We found purple Wood Blewits which grow in Faerie rings, making them easy to find once you’d happened upon the first one, Cauliflower fungus, strange looking, delicious and unfortunately in a drainage ditch in a London park so we had to give it a miss! 

Velvet Shank

Parasol Mushroom

We found Oyster mushrooms and Velvet Shanks, we were chased about the cliff top moors by wild ponies aiming to pilfer our giant Parasol Mushrooms out of our backpacks! And had the stroke of luck to stumble upon a Giant edible Puffball on a country lane in Wales. ‘Good in Soup’ said our Welsh friend, something he said whenever food didn’t quite agree with him! There were many Amanita Muscaria dotting the forest, we gave them a miss, not too tasty.

Fly Agaric or Amanita Muscaria

Giant edible Puff Ball 

We were hooked; we had mushrooms with egg for breakfast, mushrooms with salad for lunch and mushrooms with rice for dinner! We ate new varieties everyday, but the holy grail of varieties we were constantly on the lookout for, except for Chanterelles which we never found, was the Boletus. Boletus Edulus or Porcini in particular. Boletus is a large family of mostly edible mushrooms easier to identify than most because they have sponge underneath instead of gills. They are melt-in-your-mouth-delicious!

 

Mushroom hunting was one thing we missed the most about leaving England and moving to the Garden Route meant that we could take it up again! With no short supply of Pine trees, Boletus is easy to find if you know where and when to look and even though the other varieties are sadly lacking, we content ourselves with all the different Boletus available. We went hunting this week and found enough for a few dinners and to dry. Its best to pick them young, although one should never ‘pick’ mushrooms as it destroys the 'plant' or mycelium and minimizes your chances of finding them in the same place again next time. It’s best to slice them off at the base.

A Pile of Fresh Porcini!

There are so many delicious recipes for Porcini, with its well rounded nutty flavour, but I think my favourite is in an Italian tomato sauce on Pasta, although omelette is also good, and fried in butter with Paneer is also ready delectable. You really can’t go wrong! We pick the young ones only as this gives the older ones a chance to drop their spores and also, the ‘meat’ diminishes and dries out as they get bigger and the bugs dig in too. 

Fully grown Porcini are easy to find but no longer edible

Harvesting from the forest is a great family outing and we took friends whose children hadn't been before. The forest echoed with happy squeals as they found their first mushrooms and we were told several times about the Slippery Jacks and how they were NOT the right ones! Children learn fast!