Tag: mushrooms

The Last of the Great Porcinis

Fresh from the mountainside, a haul of porcinis.

In a few months I’ll be cross-country skiing while humming Christmas carols—a sobering thought.

A varmint got here first.

So like everyone else in my valley I’m madly squeezing in every last drop of outdoor activity while the sun shines warmly. That means golf and fly-fishing, gardening and mushrooming. A world of porcinis (boletus) still awaits me on the mountains, but the weather is getting drier (not good for mushrooms, which are mainly water), and the ‘shrooms are getting bigger and mushier, more likely to have been marked by a toothy chipmunk or other small animal, less suitable for my purposes.

Two perfect porcinis.

There are plenty of fine specimins still to be found, and I’m trying to forage every week now. That’s hard while preparing to co-lead a trip to Israel and Jordan in a couple of months and to teach adult Sunday School starting in just a few weeks, plus heading to a fishing competition in northwestern Canada in days. Things like bike rides and dinners out have to wait until mushroom season ends, and I schedule every week’s activities with an eye toward what I’m less likely to be able to do the next week.

But when I’m on the mountain, I cover more territory now. Seasonal campers are long gone, the sputtering roar of dirt bikes has fallen silent, and fewer foragers have pulled off onto the side of the dirt road. I show the same courtesy while mushoroming that my fly-fishing guide does while maneuvering his boat, never cutting in front of another forager/angler to steal his/her territory. Fewer foragers means more ground to cover politely.

But mushrooms like these are scarce commodities—and high-priced ingredients on the open market—that flavor soups and sauces when the snowflakes fly. They bring a little summer richness into the white bleakness of winter and remind me of warmer days, sweeter scents (snow doesn’t have a scent), bigger adventures. Mushrooming is an Easter-egg hunt for adults. You never know what you’ll find.

Waiting for the dehydrator.

So looking ahead and given that my divorce from turkey is finalized, I’m serving Wagyu tenderloin for Thanksgiving, complete with sherry-porcini gravy (and a few dried currants from my bushes). So I’m slicing mushrooms to dehydrate (I feel like such a Mountain Mama), as well as quartering small ones to freeze. I’m queen of the slow-cooker in the colder months, and I’ll be thankful for the harvest I’ve put away. (My husband will be thankful, too. He’s a fan of good food.)

Waiting for the freezer

And when I taste that deep, earthy porcini flavor I’ll think of days scrambling up cutaways in the forest and mountain-goating down steep slopes with far less grace. I’ll remember the scent of warm pine and spruce, the chattering of small mammals, the stomp of big game somewhere up in the trees. The quiet camaraderie of fellow foragers, the joy of finding a field, the excitment in of carrying a heavy bag (five gallons is the daily limit) of porcini back to the vehicle. The knowledge that by foraging, I’m engaging in a practice that’s as old as time.

And I’ll dream of next August and September, when these babies pop up through the organic material on the forest floor. I’ll remember friendships I’ve made and shared while foraging in one of the most beautiful places I’ve ever been, where I’m fortunate to live year-round.

A pircini in situ.

Porcini Pizza

“The hills are alive . . .” with MUSHROOMS! I thought the harvest was winding down, but I was so wrong! We’re having a banner year, our mountaintops still littered with porcini. (Boletus, if you’re into Latin.)

An afternoon of foraging netted a few baby porcinis and two or three fine examples of king (or prince) boletus—the best of the best. I’ve had to find these fields on my own, with only vague references as to their location. People guard mushroom fields as fiercely as social-security numbers in these parts!

Ranchman was dying for “mushroom-something,” so I assessed the ingredients at hand and decided on pizza. While the oven preheated I cleaned and chopped the smaller porcinis (four cups) and retrieved fresh marjoram and thyme (two big tablespoons—we like FLAVOR in our meals) from the back deck.

Then it was time to saute everything while he fetched the cauliflower crust from the downstairs freezer. After cooking the ‘shrooms in a couple of tablespoons of fine butter, a (gushing) squirt of truffled olive oil, and a liberal pinch of salt, the mushrooms and herbs began to carmelize. The windows were open, and I’m surprised the scent didn’t draw our next-door neighbor or the local bears—one is a 500-pound cinnamon colored black bear, a VERY big bear.

With Ranchman breathing down my neck, I assembled the pizzas. Fresh bruschetta topping made from local farmers-market tomatoes, good-quality mozzerella from a nearby dairy, sliced black olives, and shaved perocino romano all but covered the crust before I popped the pizzas in the oven and made a salad.

In twelve minutes we stood in front of the oven door, looking at dinner, watching the cheese bubble. In fifteen I pronounced dinner to be ready, and we ate one whole pizza, saving the other for dinner tonight. This morning, though, I discoverd that Ranchman had reverted to his collgiate self and indulged in pizza for breakfast. Even though our season is already beginning to taper toward autumn, he’s volunteering to go back to the mountaintops for more mushroom foraging if I’m willing to cook them.

I think we can cut a deal.

The Bounty Continues

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Ranchman the Superhero (my husband), inspired by my raving about ‘shrooming, decided to take a break from his other athletic endeavors (never marry an ex-rancher; they’ll run you into the ground) so that I could introduce him to the fine art of mushroom foraging.

I also suspect that he had pinned his hopes on another fine mushroom savory tart.

0823151021aForaging is cyclical. The boletus (porcini) harvest is pretty well over, although we managed to find small ones that will top a homemade pizza this evening. Plenty of poisonous (or at least, highly sketch) mushrooms enticed us, but I went with the if-it-has-gills, leave-it policy. Most gilled mushrooms will trigger a visit to the ER, and who has the time for that?

We discovered that I seem to have an inner radar for porcini. He makes a beeline for poisonous, but pretty, mushrooms. (Another quote from my late mother: “Pretty is as pretty does.” And these pretty little darlings will trigger a long season in the nearest restroom.) Once he recovered from his passion for beauty, he discovered his perfect fungi: the Hawk Wing.

This brown-and-white mushroom with scalloped marks grows quite large and also grows on our land. I’ve been threatening him within an inch of his life if he unleases the weed-whacker on our back-meadow culinary delights.

We found probably a hundred Hawk Wing and harvested quite a few. The large ones can become bitter, so we focused on smaller ones. We wandered, generally never leaving each other’s sight (we’re in the boonies, after all, with bear and cougar), but I’d hear his clear call, “mussssssshROOOMS!” through the trees.

As we foraged, so did the squirrels. I missed the photo of a squirrel carrying a fungi twice his or her size—dinner was on its way to the den. I saw signs of new burrows and wondered if they were made by chipmunks or pine martens. A lot of industrious work was apparent on the forest floor—telling me that I’m not the only one dreading winter, and making preparations.

The forest held other delights as well. Lichen and mosses0823151000 were beginning to turn frosty, indicating the seasonal change into which we’re tiptoeing. Wildflowers, not as abundant as earlier in the month, graced small clearings. Everywhere I looked, the earth was preparing to be covered in deep snow by Christmas. At 10,000-plus feet altitude, winter is serious business here. We hit three spots that I’d foraged earlier in the month and found a new cluster that has potential for early August.

With all that looking down, carefully searching for small, bulbous brown, white, or pink tops0823151005 pushing through the conifer-needle carpet, our necks were sore and we were ready to call it a day. But the day itself was so beautiful that we took the long way home, choosing a National Forest road over a second pass, moving slowly, rocking and rolling through ruts and washes in a world that’s starting to show signs of the next seasonal change.

We’re down to the wire here, and I’m wondering how many more fishing trips, rounds of golf and mushrooming, and days in the garden are ahead of me before things slow down. But slowing down is good, too, because it brings Thanksgiving and Christmas, and family and friends, and all the cooking that accompanies autumn. So I guess that I’m kind of like that little squirrel, thinking ahead and preparing for the future.

But if I ever encounter a mushroom twice as big as me, you can bet I’ll leave it for Ranchman to carry. He’s a steady beast of burden, and I feed him well!

Fungi Food

4956501016_a8e2c64c6e_z-400x266I couldn’t create a less-appealing title, but this one makes me laugh, so enjoy it with me, please.

I want to rave about what I did with the wild mushrooms I foraged last week, especially since late summer is a time of bounty, and autumn (which will sweep across my mountain top too soon, in only weeks) is harvest in so many parts of the US.

Prepare to drool.

I fetched my brown paper bag from the refrigerator and dumped three pounds of mushrooms on a towel. Some had gone from bad to worse and were just too ugly to eat. (To paraphrase my late mother’s quote last week, beauty may only be skin deep, but I’m still not eating something that resembles pond scum.) I washed them, removing any dirty parts, and assessed what was left.

A devoted forager would make stock from the homely ‘shrooms, freezing them for the winter soups that sustain us where winter is a verb. I probably discarded more than necessary before I chopped the keepers. (Note the three beautiful boletus—porcini—between 9:00 and 11:00 o’clock in the photo below.)

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Then I sauted chopped scallions in olive oil and butter, adding a tablespoon of truffle oil to the mix. (Truffle oil and mushrooms are my fall dynamic duo. Watch out, champagne and gougeres, those tiny French cheese puffs that melt in my mouth!) When the scallions were soft, I added the freshly harvested mushrooms, plus fresh marjoram and thyme from the herb pot on the back deck.0813151240a

When most of the juices were consolidated, I added port wine, sherry and chicken broth. I then reduced the mixture before adding a healthy dollop of cream fraiche.

At this point I could have served the mushrooms over pasta, blended them into risotto, or eaten them right from the pan. (BUSTED!) But I had plans for them that included two partially pre-baked whole-wheat pastry shells sprinkled (while still warm) with fine pecorino-Romano cheese. Into the shells they went, topped with more cheese, then into the oven for about 45 minutes.

0813151415The results were amazing. Ranchman the Superhero (my husband of more than thirty years) said that he didn’t know what he was eating, but that it was “the best of whatever it was he had ever eaten.” That’s a  compliment from someone who grew up eating beef three times a day. (And he’s still alive and healthy. The human body is an amazing thing.)

The entire production took an hour and a half, primarily because I did brain surgery with a paring knife during the cleaning process. (I am as disinterested in protein via the worms that love these mushrooms as I am in pond scum.)

While I was working over the sink, stirring the reduction and sniffing my way past the oven, I marveled that such deliciousness could come from my backyard. I thought about settlers crossing these demanding mountain ranges. Of grouse and elk and trout that inhabit these parts. This land can provide for those who know what to look for and are willing to hunt and forage and fish.

I’m hooked. I’ve planned another mushroom expedition before the season ends late next month. If I score more boletus, I’ll freeze them to add to my Thanksgiving dressing.

Now that will be something to be thankful for!

Fungi Foray

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Summer is finally in full swing on my mountaintop, and we’re squeezing every ray of sunshine from every beautiful day. Fishing and hiking, golfing and gardening fill the calendar as my literary agent shops the first book in my latest mystery series.

0810151535And although epic days are normal here this time of year, and this summer—with late snows and heavy rains, without wildfires polluting our air—is magnificent,  today I did something extraordinary.

I went mushroom hunting.

Before you yawn and think of a checkout line, I’m not talking about walking supermarket aisles looking for shrink-wrapped boxes of Baby Bellas. I’m talking about driving to the top of the pass—roughly 11,000 feet in altitude—wearing a sun hat, raingear and sturdy, waterproof boots to search for morels, boletus (porcini), hawk wing, and a mysterious little pink mushroom that smells like shrimp. (I looked for other fungi, too, but the names never stick. Maybe next year.)

I have a healthy respect for anything that can hurt me—the bears and cougars living in the valley snaking beneath my office window come to mind—even though I’ve waded out of nearly waist-deep African rivers swollen by the Big Rains and caught piranhas from the Amazon. And I live in the0810151159 Rockies, where “magic mushrooms” are hallucinogenic, so have observed the “fungi-weird.” So choosing life and lucidity, I harnessed my risk-averse personality and ‘shroomed with a mycologist. That’s your first lesson in mushrooming: Always go with someone who can tell you which fungi are deadly—because several mushrooms will kill you, or make you so sick that you might wish you were dead.

Searching for these gems, some just barely erupting through a pine-and-spruce-needle carpet, was a giant Easter egg hunt for chefs. I had a blast scrambling through the forest, grasping my (sheathed) knife in my gloved hand, looking for disturbances or discrepancies in the dark organic matter covering an earth that thirty feet of snow will blanket in six months.

IMG_20150810_135130591As the mycologist explained the relationship between spruce trees and porcinis, and all about mycelium—a white webbing that is earth’s biggest living organism and a fungi superhighway—I thought of the tightly entwined and ever-expanding network of relationships in nature, and about the diversity of wildflowers, mushrooms, and birds.

Then I stumbled (yes, literally almost fell on it) across the most beautiful mushroom of the day.  The Aminita is a red marvel with white dots—and also deadly. As my late mother would say, “Beauty is only skin deep.”

I guess that her  words of Southern wisdom apply to fungi as well as humans, although I do hope that you’re having a beautiful summer and enjoying the great outdoors.