New in Paperback!

I'm pleased to announce that my book, Fat of the Land: Adventures of a 21st Century Forager, is now out in paperback. You can buy a copy at all the usual places: Amazon, Powell's, Barnes & Noble, or your local bookstore.

A few Quotes & Reviews: 

"Once in a while a book crosses my desk that gives me pause, and once in a very great while a book will resonate with me in such a way that it becomes part of my permanent collection. Fat of the Land, by Langdon Cook, is one of those. Part memoir, part cookbook, part field guide for the adventurous gourmand, Cook's book is simultaneously lyrical, practical and quixotic." —Greg Atkinson, Seattle Times

Smart, funny, and hugely knowledgeable, Langdon Cook is a walking field guide and a gifted storyteller. Fat of the Land is a welcome kick in the pants to get outside and start foraging for our suppers. —Molly Wizenberg, author of A Homemade Life: Stories and Recipes from My Kitchen Table

"With his beautifully-crafted prose, rare gift for storytelling, and good humor to spare, Langdon Cook serves up the best kind of nature writing: drawing readers along on his wild adventures, and leaving us with a deepened sense of daily sustenance in the natural world." —Lyanda Lynn Haupt, author of Crow Planet: Essential Wisdom from the Urban Wilderness

Wild Indian: Stinging Nettle Paneer & Porcini Chana Masala

Sometimes a kitchen experiment yields better results than you ever imagined, and you feel like Gene Wilder in Young Frankenstein. Happily, my recent creation neither ran amok through the neighborhood nor incited a pitchfork mob—though it did get a wild applause from my dinner guests.

I'm talking about my Stinging Nettle Paneer. The dreaded stinging nettle, as most of us have known since childhood, is a monstrous weed. It's invasive and hard to eradicate, and woe to those who try to drive it from civilization, because the nasty barbs pack a painful wallop. On the other hand, with a little love and understanding, the nettle becomes an ideal food. It's one of the first greens of spring (late winter for many of us) and loaded with nutrients.

Most people I know who like Indian cuisine have a special place in their hearts for Saag Paneer, the creamy spinach curry with fried cheese. After all, spinach is good for us and even a decadent presentation feels somehow virtuous. Try this recipe with stinging nettles and you'll simultaneously welcome the weed and never feel quite the same about Saag Paneer again.

Substitute stinging nettles for spinach? Really? Believe me, you'll wonder whether this dish was originally invented with the belligerent weed in mind. The nettles leave the spinach in the dust. They're so bright in flavor, with a wild sweetness that goes perfectly with the Indian spices. My dinner guests were blown away and so was I. This dish goes to the top of the list of stinging nettle recipes.

Stinging Nettle Paneer

3/4 lb paneer, cut into cubes
1 large onion
3-4 cloves garlic
1 4-inch thumb of ginger, peeled
2 tbsp vegetable oil, plus extra for frying paneer
3-4 cardamom pods, crushed
1/2 tsp cumin seeds
1/4 tsp ground cinnamon
1/8 tsp ground cloves
1-2 plum tomatoes, diced
20 oz boiled nettles, drained
1/2 tsp turmeric
1 tsp ground cumin
1 tsp ground coriander
1 heaping tsp garam masala
1 tsp black pepper
1-2 tsp salt
1 cup, more or less, heavy cream or yogurt or a mix
cilantro for garnish

1. In a food processor, pulverize the onion, garlic, and ginger into paste.

2. Over medium heat, saute paste in oil for a few minutes in heavy-bottomed saucepan. Add cumin seeds, cardamom, cinnamon, cloves, and tomatoes, and cook for a minute or two, stirring occasionally.

3. Squeeze out excess water in boiled nettles. You'll have a clump about the size of a baseball. Chop up by hand or with a food processor; I like mine well chopped, but not overly pulverized.

4. Add nettles to pan, along with tumeric, cumin, coriander, garam masala, black pepper, and salt. Stir together well.

5. Meanwhile fry paneer cubes in a little oil until lightly browned, then add to nettle mixture just before serving.

6. Finish over low heat with heavy cream or yogurt to desired consistency. Garnish with fresh cilantro.

***

I've been working through my store of frozen wild mushrooms all winter. With spring porcini season around the corner, it seemed like a good time to use up the freezer supply and make room for a new batch. Mushrooms work well in any number of Indian curries; I especially like their addition to this Chana Masala, where they provide an added textural dimension, not to mention mushroomy flavor.

For this dish I turned to Michael Natkin's recipe over at Herbivoracious for the spice regime. Toasting your spices in oil is a traditional way to extract full flavor, but you want to be extra careful not to burn the spices. The toasted black mustard seeds, in particular, are a must.

Porcini Chana Masala

1/2 pound porcini mushrooms (or cremini), roughly chopped
1 can (14 oz) chickpeas, drained
1 medium onion
3-4 cloves garlic
1 4-inch thumb fresh ginger, peeled
2 tablespoons vegetable oil
2 teaspoons black mustard seeds
1 teaspoon fennel seeds
1 teaspoon cumin seeds
1 teaspoon coriander seeds
1 can (14 oz) diced tomatoes, drained
1 teaspoon ground turmeric
1/4 teaspoon ground cinnamon
1/8 tsp ground cloves
1/4 tsp cayenne pepper
1 tbsp lemon juice
1 tsp salt
1 tbsp brown sugar (optional)
1 cup (or more) water, stock, cream
cilantro for garnish

1. With a food processor make a paste with onion, garlic, and ginger.

2. Heat oil over medium heat in a large skillet. Add black mustard, fennel, cumin, and coriander seeds, and toast until mustard seeds start to pop (about 30 seconds or so). Note: do not overcook spices in oil or the curry will be bitter. Immediately add paste and tomatoes. Cook until liquid evaporates and mixture begins to brown.

3. In a separate pan, saute mushrooms in a little oil or butter until lightly browned. Add to skillet along with chickpeas. (I used previously sauteed and frozen porcini, and added directly after thawing.)

4. Add turmeric, cinnamon, cloves, cayenne pepper, lemon juice, salt, and a cup or so of water if necessary.

5. Cook uncovered over medium-low heat for 15 minutes. Adjust seasonings.

6. I finished my curry with a tablespoon of brown sugar and a half can (about a cup) of coconut milk, for a slightly sweeter curry. Garnish with fresh cilantro.

Cooking Indian at home can seem like a recipe for failure. All those spices! If you're new to Indian cuisine, the first step is to visit your local spice store. You'll want to have the basics: turmeric, cumin seeds, cardamom pods, ground coriander, garam masala, and so on. The amount of spices and seasonings will be overwhelming at first, but a little practice and before long you'll be making your own adjustments to once-obscure seeming spices in a given recipe based on personal preference.

My New Column!

In their infinite wisdom—or maybe a moment of deadline and coffee-induced weakness—the editorial folks at Seattle Magazine have handed over a few column inches to this here foraging scribbler. It's called...drumroll..."Cook's Adventures." Every other issue I'll be taking readers on a jaunt to some of my favorite outdoor grocery stores to sample the wild foods therein.

For the inaugural column we stay close to home, just sticking a toe in the swirling currents of adventurous gastronomy. "Weed Eater" is a tour of my backyard—and probably yours too. Bottom line: Don't compost those dandelions. Eat them!

Yesterday on Seattle's King 5 TV, I spoke with Margaret Larson on New Day Northwest about the new column, taste-tested a few backyard weeds with the studio audience, and cooked up a batch of Stinging Nettle Soup. Coming in May: Morels!

Winter Pick

A month doesn't go by on the mushroom trail without some variety of fungi getting picked, packed, and sent to market. Between Alaska and California, you can harvest wild mushrooms virtually any day of the year. Itinerant circuit pickers, though a far cry from snowbird retirees in white shoes, operate on a similar premise: they move south in the coldest months, calling Northern California's mild climate home for a spell. Their work is known as the winter pick.

The trifecta of winter pick includes yellowfoot (Craterellus tubaeformis, pictured at right; like steelhead, the word is singular even when it's plural), hedgehogs (Hydnum repandum and H. umbilicatum), and black trumpets (Craterellus cornucopioides). The latter are simply called blacks by the pickers and they're the backbone of the winter harvest. Blacks are members of the chanterelle family and they have that same beguiling mix of fruit and earthiness that make their relative the golden chanterelle so popular in the kitchen. But the blacks, for my money, are even more flavorful.

Unfortunately, my home state of Washington is not a hot spot for black trumpets. In the western U.S. these mushrooms thrive in coastal hills with a tree composition of mixed hardwoods (especially tanoak and madrone) and a smattering of conifers. Northern California is the bulls-eye. Though not mycorrhizal with redwoods, blacks seem to prefer having a few of them around.

Looking for this cryptically colored mushroom in dense tanoak leaf-litter is a challenge. Much of its long, fluted stem grows beneath the duff, making it look like nothing so much as a little hole in the ground. Occasionally, toward the end of the season, large clumps will form, some of them seven or more inches tall and easier to spot. A friend of mine calls these California clusters.

This year my timing was off. The season started with promise—and then in January Norcal was hit with a month-long drought, high temperatures, and warm winds that exasperated the situation. The blacks fried where they stood. Gakked was how my picker friends described it, as in "Winter pick is over. The blacks are gakked." You get the picture.

Yellowfoot and hedgehogs took a beating as well, though not as thoroughly. But I was headed to the Bay Area anyway, so I investigated a few patches along the way to pick dryers. Doug, the circuit picker of past posts, was with me. He knew he couldn't sell any fresh mushrooms of this quality, so he focused on stinging nettles and watercress instead, with detours to mushroom patches for my dehydrator.

After leaving Doug off at a nettle patch where he planned to pick and camp, I continued on to Santa Cruz. The mushrooms down there fruit later than their brethren to the north, so they had largely escaped the killing heat of January. A sharp-eyed member of the Fungus Federation named Nate showed me a few of his patches near town and I was able to load up on fresh blacks to take home. Nate also introduced me to my first mudpuppy—the newly named Cantharellus californicus, the largest chanterelle in the world (see below right).

I could get used to an annual pilgrimage south for winter pick. The scenery along the California coast is as spectacular as advertised, and the redwood and hardwood forests are enticingly different from my own stomping grounds. Best of all, a trip to California in winter means a chance to hunt mushrooms while my own patches lay dormant.

Cooking black trumpets is as easy as throwing a handful in the saute pan with a pat of butter. They go great over a steak, or you can infuse a sauce with their intense flavor. All three of the main winter mushrooms are often used together. One of the best mushroom dishes I ever had was a single spoonful intermezzo of hedgehog and yellowfoot with mascarpone and a single small black trumpet on top.

Winter Risotto with Butternut Squash & Black Trumpets

Black trumpets are the perfect garnish for this hearty yet slightly sweet winter risotto, along with fresh cold-weather ingredients such as butternut squash, arugula, and sage. The peppery arugula tempers the sweetness of the squash and the black trumpets add an extra dimension of earthy flavor that you won't find in your typical recipe for Butternut Squash Risotto.

1 2-lb butternut squash, cut into 1/2-inch cubes
4 tbsp butter
1 large shallot, diced
1 clove garlic, minced
1 1/2 cups arborio rice
1/2 cup dry white wine
6-8 cups chicken or vegetable broth
1/3 cup Parmigiano-Reggiano cheese, grated
2 tbsp fresh sage, chopped
1 packed cup fresh arugula
1/4 lb black trumpet and/or yellowfoot mushrooms, rinsed

1. To peel and cut squash without losing a finger, see Simply Recipes.

2. Warm stock in a pot.

3. Saute squash in 2 tablespoons of butter in a heavy-bottomed saucepan, covered, for 5 minutes over medium-high heat. Stir occasionally. Remove lid and cook a few more minutes to lightly brown squash.

4. Add shallot and garlic. Cook together with squash for a few minutes before deglazing pan with wine. Immediately add rice and stir thoroughly to coat. Reduce heat to medium.

5. Stir in a ladle or two of stock, repeating as the liquid is absorbed until rice is al dente.

6. While risotto is cooking, saute mushrooms in a tablespoon of butter. Set aside.

7. Finish risotto off-heat by stirring in sage, arugula, cheese, and last tablespoon of butter. Season with salt to taste. Garnish with sauteed mushrooms.

Serves 6

Northern California: From Woods to Plate

Dear Bay Area Readers: Next week I'll be visiting your neck of the woods to give a couple talks on wild mushroom cookery. I'll be speaking (and showing slides) at the Fungus Federation of Santa Cruz on Wednesday, February 16,  and again the following night, Thursday, February 17, at the Bay Area Mycological Society in Berkeley. Come on by and say hello.

Field Trips and Workshops

In upcoming months I'll be teaching a variety of classes on foraging, cooking, and writing in the Puget Sound region. One day maybe I'll get organized enough to send out a newsletter to those of you interested in such classes. In the meantime, check back here on the blog periodically to see what's being offered. I'll post dates in the right column.

In an exciting new collaboration I'll be working with the Bainbridge Island Metro Park & Recreation District to offer several foraging and cooking classes in 2011. The first will be a stinging nettles class with instruction both in the field and in the kitchen. I'll also be teaching shellfish classes [dates TBD], including a geoduck dig!

Writing workshops are on tap as well. On April 23 I'll be teaching an all-day Environmental Writers Workshop in Seattle. This is sponsored by the Burke Museum and will be held at the Center for Urban Horticulture. In September I'll be at the North Cascades Institute for the three-day Thunder Arm Writing Retreat, and some time this fall I'll be teaching a writing workshop at 826 Seattle. Stay tuned for updates.

• Feb 3, Mid-Valley Willamette Writers Speakers Series, Tsunami Books, Eugene, OR. Craft lecture: "Creative Nonfiction: How to Tell the Truth Like a Bald-Faced Liar." 
• Feb 8, Possession Sound Reading Series, Everett Community College, Everett, WA.
• Mar 23, Stinging Nettles Workshop, in association with Bainbridge Island Metro Park & Recreation District, Bainbridge Island, WA.
• Apr 23, Environmental Writers Workshop, in association with the Burke Museum, Seattle, WA.
• Sep 8 - 11, North Cascades Institute's Thunder Arm Writing Retreat, North Cascades National Park, WA.

Note: If you would like to organize your own field trip, you can contact me at finspotcook AT gmail dot com. I've taken groups up to 25 in number on nature walks and wild food walks around the Seattle area and Tiger Mountain. This is a good introduction to foraging and plant identification.

What's up, Doc?

Some of you might be wondering what happened to all the hunting talk. After all, I took Washington State's Hunter Education class and even went scouting and trap shooting with a friend of mine.

Since then I've also visited my brother-in-law in Arkansas to go squirrel hunting. I had high hopes of making this Squirrel Gumbo.

So what happened?

Well, for one thing, I got skunked. Seems those country squirrels aren't quite as insouciant as their city cousins. I saw one all day and it made sure to keep plenty of brush between us before high-tailing out of sight.

More importantly, I must confess that I have not yet grown accustomed to walking the woods with a firearm. All my life I've been outfitted with binoculars or a compass or a mushroom knife—at most, a fishing rod. Bushwhacking around with a gun, truth be told, feels decidedly different. Suddenly I'm an interloper, an antagonist.

Yes, I realize this is all in my head, but that doesn't make it any easier.

I've also made a conscious decision to embrace my love of mushroom hunting and see where that leads. No doubt you've noticed the uptick in fungal-related posts.

Maybe the hurry-up mode with which I first approached hunting, as if trying to make up for lost time, was a mistake. Some things are easier to learn as a kid. Foreign languages and skiing, for instance. Given a choice, I think I'd rather go a-wandering with shotgun in hand than try conjugating Spanish verbs. So this is not the end of my short-lived hunting career, just a speed bump.

In case you were wondering.

No Shrimp

Are you sick of my mushroom posts yet? Here’s a change of scenery: Snowbird Central, the southern Gulf Coast of Florida. This is the only truly tropical corner of the continental U.S., where white shoes and blue hair are the norm.

We went to visit the rellies, but the fish called, so we took a flyer and booked a half-day trip as a Christmas gift to ourselves. Guided fishing ain’t cheap. Yet when time is short and terra is incognita, it makes sense to pony up and learn something from the local pros.

Enter Captain Pat with his dandy flats boat and years of experience fishing the Naples backcountry. Our trip would take us into the maze of mangroves that make up the inland waterways of southwestern Florida, to the edge of Rookery Bay and the northern limit of the Ten Thousand Islands.

Just after 8 a.m., Captain Pat cut the engine and poled us into a slot where a deep, narrow cut held fish up against a line of mangroves. We baited up with shrimp and tossed our lines into the channel. Almost immediately I heard what would become a familiar refrain: "I’ve got a fish!" Riley’s pole was doubled over. He reeled in a beautiful sheepshead of 13 inches, a keeper. Food requirements met, we settled down to enjoying the sport. Riley had six fish to the boat—sheepshead, mangrove snappers, and sundry other backwater finners—before I landed a lowly catfish requiring careful release due to poisonous spines. This was met with general merriment from my fellow anglers.

"You’re more of a fly-fisherman," my boy tried to console me. Captain Pat assured me the next spot would offer some fly-friendly water.

Indeed, the next spot was leeward where the incoming tide moved swiftly over a shallow bar adjacent to a deep pocket of jade green water. Captain Pat produced a flyrod and I happily gave up my bait rod. Second cast—bang!—fish on. A few seconds later, fish off. Several more casts and nada. The good captain examined my fly and popped on what he called a tip and what I called a cheater, a little piece of shrimp. I tossed out the ungainly thing and felt an immediate tug. Thankfully the tip was gone when I reeled in. I suggested we try a different fly rather than another cheater, something a little heavier to get down in the feeding lane, and the captain tied on a lead-eye fly that looked like a variation of a Crazy Charlie. Next cast, fish on. I put the cork to it this time and hauled in a beautiful ladyfish, crowing "Let the record show no shrimp in evidence." This earned me several guffaws of derision from my mates and the nickname No Shrimp.

The next forty-five minutes were hot, with a fish on nearly every cast, all of them ladyfish, which are also known as poor man's tarpon. My brother Whit and Riley had good action too, with ladyfish, seatrout, and snapper. My fly-fishing success didn’t escape notice from the boy. As you’ll recall, he’s been practicing his fly-casting this past year. I relinquished the rod and took up the video camera.

The kid continues to astound me. I'd chalk it up to beginner's luck, but this so-called luck seems to be a recurring feature of his young angling career. He nailed fish after fish on the fly, finally turning to me with a hint of both pride and lament in his voice.

"Looks like we'll have to share the name No Shrimp, Dada."

Back at the dock the pelicans and egrets sensed an easy meal.

For lunch we sautéed the sheepshead fillets in butter with a simple seasoning of salt and pepper, a mixture of dried herbs, and a light sprinkle of Old Bay. Sheepshead is lovely fish, white and flaky with a mild flavor. They made an excellent sandwich on a fresh Kaiser roll with mayo for No Shrimp Sr. and No Shrimp Jr.

Down the Rabbit Hole with David Arora, Part 2

It's no secret that I enjoy spending time with "the mushroom people." (Think 1950s sci-fi flick, with a menacing invasion of creatures who fail to conform to the American standard of ignorant mall-walker.) Many of the mushroom people I know, while being a diverse lot overall, share a few similar traits in common. They like to tromp around all day in the outdoors. By night they're in their kitchens, cooking up the day's catch and drinking wine. They take pride in lost skills such as recognizing the plants and animals around them; cooking from scratch; and home-brewing, distilling, and wine-making. What's not to like? These are my people.

And so it was a pleasure to recently visit the home in Gualala, California, of one of the mushroom people trailblazers ("take me to your leader..."). After the Albion weekend concluded a couple dozen of us drove an hour down the coast to David Arora's house, where another week of foraying and feasting went on, capped by a Saturday workshop on the magic of fire—hearth-cooking—taught by Arora's good friend William Rubel. Imagine lighting out for the universe only to find a planet where the people looked  a lot like you but actually respected the natural environment and used its offerings to make wonderful food and drink.

Arora's house is the ultimate shrine to the mushroom people. The San Francisco Chronicle has already done a piece on it (click for slideshow), so I won't belabor the point. Just try to picture a labyrinthine cabin in the coastal mountains overlooking the Pacific, a place designed to entertain scores of mushroom people at once, with beds tucked away in corners and in lofts all over the house (including the amazing mushroom loft with its giant toadstool steps), five fireplaces for warmth, and several additional out-buildings for the overflow, including a "princess suite" and the "Saloon," where games of dominoes and cards are waged with drams of the hard stuff. I didn't see a single TV.

Arora is a collector. A collector of mushrooms, antiques, stories, even people. Guests included husband-and-wife jump blues musicians from Oakland, a public defender from Spokane, a Sonoma wine maker, a Washington State wine distributor, a wandering poet of unknown address, a local Mendocino forester, a Vancouver Island hotelier and co-founder of Slow Food Canada, another Canadian"nature awareness mentor," two seaglass divers from Santa Cruz, a San Francisco web developer, and the Ashland, Oregon-based discoverer of the world’s first aquatic mushroom.

The first night's revelry included a big sit-down dinner using Thanksgiving leftovers (Turkey and Chanterelle Tetrazzini), Hedgehog Crostini, a salad of baby lettuces and wild wood-sorrel, and an arsenal of wines complements of the guest distributor and hotelier. The toasting sticks (pictured left and below) got plenty of use and the musicians helped us work off dinner with a wild set of boogie-woogie.

Over the next few days a few of us made mushroom forays to Salt Point State Park, Jackson State Forest, and even on the property itself, which, during a midnight foray lit by headlamp, yielded baskets of white and golden chanterelles, matsutake, saffron milkcaps, shrimp russulas, and man on horseback mushrooms. Arora is a big fan of grilling marinated russulas over the fire, and I have to admit I'm now a believer in this edible mushroom that nevertheless often earns the distinction of being "better kicked than picked." After thoroughly cleaning the cap, just brush on some olive oil and chopped garlic before roasting over hot coals until both sides are lightly browned. 

My last night was the hearth-cooking class. Along with a dozen students up from the Bay Area, we string-roasted legs of lamb by the fire, cooked wild greens and a mushroom tart over the coals, and made an amazing apple tatin—all by the hearth, with instruction (and occasional poetry readings) from Rubel. Great merriment and food enlivened a rainy night. It's hard not to see the hearth-cooking as a metaphor. 

If this all seems like hagiography, let me say that in these dark days of the Republic, when our elected officials on both sides of the aisle will mostly be remembered as the butts of late night TV jokes, it seems high time to present an alternative vision. I couldn't imagine a better place to be on Black Friday than Mendocino County, among the mushroom people. The rest of the week only confirmed my belief in the need for Americans to cease trying to fill the voids in their lives with stuff and instead reconnect with immaterial things of true and lasting value.

I know, it's a tough choice: fight your way through the mall-walking throngs in search of the latest Furby—or sit around a table having a pointless discussion with other humans about such useless endeavors as art, travel, and natural history. After all, didn't we have a recent U.S. president who made a political virtue of his lack of curiosity?

If you think you'd like to present yourself as a candidate for mushroom people abduction, I'd recommend joining a local mycological club. My own, the Puget Sound Mycological Society, is one of the great deals in clubdom, with an annual membership of $30 that gets you invited to free forays all over the state during the  spring and fall mushroom seasons as well as monthly meetings with speakers and slideshows and much more. Other storied places where the mushroom people meet include the annual Breitenbush Mushroom Conference in the Oregon Cascades, which includes all of the above fun plus natural hot springs, and SOMA Camp, a three-day event in January sponsored by the Sonoma Mycological Association.

Down the Rabbit Hole with David Arora, Part 1

"Whhhhhhhhhhheeeeeeeeeewwwwwwwwwwwww..." That's the sound of me chasing the White Rabbit.

And there before me, with a Cheshire Cat grin, is my bespectacled host, holding a platter of not-your-everyday food steaming in the kitchen of the Albion Biological Field Station.

Any trip to Mendocino County can feel like something dreamed up by Lewis Carroll, but when it involves a half-dozen or more species of wild mushrooms that have never met this blogger's taste buds, including the iconic fly agaric—the pyschoactive mushroom rumored to have inspired some of Carroll's magical mayhem in Alice in Wonderland—the scene is set for a tea party of Mad Hatter proportion.

But we are not here to do psychedelics. We are here to learn about fungi—and eat. My host is mycologist David Arora, author of the celebrated field guide Mushrooms Demystified. Arora has been a fixture on the mushroom hunting scene for four decades, and for the past 20 years he's put together a Thanksgiving weekend event in the coastal California town of Albion, just south of Mendocino. Two days of forays are capped by an evening of extensive tasting, with everyone involved in the "woods to plate" drama.

The kitchen is warm with gas burners and camaraderie as each student pitches in to help. Attendees clean, prep, and cook dozens of species of edible mushrooms, including several species I've never eaten before: the midnight blue entoloma (Entoloma bloxamii), amethyst laccaria (Laccaria amethysteo-occidentalis), and beefsteak mushroom (Fistulina hepatica), which looks like fillet mignon when sliced open.

More than any other species, though, Arora is known for serving his guests Amanita muscaria. This practice is not uncontroversial. Amanita muscaria, also known as the fly agaric for its ancient use as a pesticide, is generally considered by English-language field guides to be a dangerous toxic mushroom. It’s been documented as a hallucinogen and used as a drug by social groups as varied as middle-class American hippies and Siberian reindeer herders, and occasionally it’s implicated in deaths, though not directly. In one recent case a victim ate the mushroom for its psychotropic effects and died of hypothermia.

But, as Arora points out in his workshops, Amanita muscaria is also used as food. It turns out the mushroom can be easily detoxified and consumed.

Still, many mycologists object to such teachings. Michael Kuo talks about "Amanita bravado" in his book 100 Edible Mushrooms, suggesting that novices might be tempted to sample dangerous mushrooms out of peer pressure. Arora scoffs at this notion. For him, the use of Amanita muscaria as food is simply a case of scientific research triumphing over prejudice. He cites two main reasons for serving it: First, "to introduce people to the huge menu of edible and delicious mushrooms available if we would but open our minds."And second, that the classic form of Amanita muscaria—red cap with white warts—is among the easiest of organisms to identify, and while there is risk in preparation, there is no risk in identification. 
As to the risk, he points out that red kidney beans are also quite toxic raw and even more toxic when undercooked, and humans eat numerous other plants and vegetables that require careful processing to be edible (e.g. tapioca and pokeweed).

Besides being strikingly beautiful, Amanita muscaria can be a large mushroom and in certain locales quite common. These qualities make it an attractive choice. More importantly for the table, it's also quite flavorful, with a firm texture and a sweet nutty taste that is unlike other mushrooms. Despite being sliced up and boiled in a large vat of water for 15 minutes (the main toxins are water soluble), the drained mushroom sautés up nicely, crisp and slightly browned.

When I told a commercial picker that I had tried Amanita muscaria and found it tasty, he replied "So are scorpions! Not worth the effort."

Arora is undeterred. "What effort?" he asks. "The effort of carrying a pot of water from kitchen tap to stove? The effort of slicing up the mushrooms? And if extra effort is to be avoided, then why go foraging in the first place when you can buy food at a corner store?"

If you’re interested in eating Amanita muscaria as food you must first do your homework. When not processed properly, these mushrooms can be dangerous, unpredictable, and result in a trip to the hospital—not just a bad trip. First, read William Rubel and David Arora’s paper from Economic Botany, "A Study of Cultural Bias in Field Guide Determinations of Mushroom Edibility Using the Iconic Mushroom, Amanita muscaria, as an Example.” Then read Lawrence Millman and Tonya Haff’s account of an accidental poisoning, "Notes on the Ingestion of Amanita Muscaria," to see what can go wrong, and why.

Some believe that it's irresponsible to even talk about the potential edibility of Amanita muscaria, especially considering our own species' propensity for faulty reasoning and bad decision-making. After all, the Amanita genus is home to some of the most toxic mushrooms on the planet, including the Death Cap (Amanita phalloides) and Destroying Angel (Amanita ocreata et al).

Obviously this writer feels that ignorance and stupidity are not good enough reasons to censor a discussion about using Amanita muscaria as food. That said, my own interest lies elsewhere. Most days I'd rather see the colorful fly agaric on the roadside than in some curious forager's soup pot. But I find it incredible that a mushroom eaten around the world can be so vilified in our own culture where a box of Fruity Pebbles is kept on the supermarket shelf at eye-level for five-year-olds.

Who's nuttier—the people who eat Amanita muscaria for food, or us?

Comments are open.