Morel and Wild Asparagus Risotto for dinner

You can find patches of wild asparagus (Asparagus officinalis) in nearly the entire United States, if you know where and when to spot them. In our area, they are found in old fields, perhaps left over from farmland gardens, or planted when birds consumed the red berries in the autumn. It's easiest to spot them in late summer, though, after they have shot up to 4 feet tall and formed their feathery branches and sparse berries--which are not edible. The foliage has a greenish-blue hue, so it stands out in a field of mostly green grass or maturing hay. Then the trick is to remember all of the places you saw the asparagus growing and come back in the spring to collect them when they are shoots, which is the stage we all recognize from the grocery store.

Morels (Morchella americana) are out at the same time, and these two spring foods combine well for a tender and flavorful risotto. As a matter of fact, it was a few years ago that we were collecting some wild asparagus in a field surrounded by old ash trees, when Robert noticed there were actually morels growing in the grass, 149 of them! While the asparagus patch still produces a few dozen spears each year, we haven't found the bounty of morels again, this year only finding 8 of them in the woods nearby.

The risotto was made with vegetable broth that had a few dried morels added for flavor, white wine, sauteed morels, steamed asparagus, and some fresh chopped ramps greens.

Morel Marsala Gravy over Savory Ramps and Cornmeal Waffles

Spring for foragers in the northeast includes ramps (Allium tricoccum) and if you are very lucky and persistent, morels (Morchella americana in this case). They taste great together in assorted pilaf recipes, sauteed with some pasta, and last year we made some savory cornmeal waffles with ramps greens, and topped it with a morel-Marsala gravy. Sadly, we don't find a lot of morels to make this often enough to test a real recipe, this was a bit of an experiment for dinner that worked out nicely.

This is considered a very good haul in the Northeast

Ramps and some native Trillium

Wood Ear Recipe - Wood Ear Salad

Two of the great perks of our mushroom club membership with the Connecticut Valley Mycological Society are our fantastic potlucks and our annual March Mushroom Madness meeting. March is certainly not mushroom hunting season in Connecticut, but many of us are already fatigued by our New England winter/spring weather and looking forward to mushroom season to start. The MMM meeting is held indoors at the Sessions Woods Wildlife Management Area in Burlington, and we get a speaker as well as serve a continental breakfast. This year we had Noah Seigel present "A Season of Fun(gi)" for a large group of members and the general public.

Our potluck contribution was a wood ear salad, made from wood ear fungus we purchased in the Boston Chinatown the week before. A benefit of belonging to other clubs in our region is that we can attend their special off-season functions, and we had joined the Boston Mycological Club for a Chinatown fungus shopping excursion with a private mushroom-themed banquet afterwards at a Chinese restaurant. We sampled nine courses at the restaurant, all featuring mushrooms. One of my favorites was the wood ear salad, which we attempted to re-create here.

The wood ears (Auricularia auricula) were purchased dried, and simply rehydrated in water. I also picked up something labeled as "snow fungus", a white jelly (Tremella fusciformis) and added it to the salad as well for a color contrast. Jelly fungi dehydrate into nearly nothing, and will absorb tons of water to return to their fresh, jelly-like consistency. Some fresh veggies and a vinaigrette dressing are added right before service. The overall salad is crunchy, squishy, tangy, and smoky from the toasted sesame oil.


Wood Ear Salad    serves 12-16

Dressing:
1/2 c. rice vinegar
1/2 c. water
6 Tbsp sugar
2 tsp salt
2 tsp toasted sesame oil
1 tsp chili-garlic paste

Salad:
1 c. dried wood ear mushrooms
1 cucumber, peeled, seeded, and thinly sliced
1/2 red onion, thinly sliced
1/2 c. washed and de-stemmed cilantro leaves
1/2 c. garlic mustard micro-greens or bean sprouts(optional)

1. For the dressing, add all of the ingredients to a small saucepan and heat until the sugar has dissolved. Allow the dressing to cool.
2. Place the dried wood ears in room temperature water and allow them to soak it up for about 30 minutes. They will expand dramatically!
3. While the mushrooms are re-hydrating, prepare the veggies: peel, seed, and chop the cucumbers, wash and de-stem the cilantro, thinly slice the  red onion. Cover and chill the fresh veggies until service.
4. Clean the wood ears: You may notice a thicker area on the ears where they were attached to the wood, remove it with a sharp knife as it sometimes has some grit trapped in the mushroom flesh. Keep the pieces about the size of a quarter, so you may have to cut some pieces in half so they are not too large. Bring a pot of water to boil, and boil the cleaned wood ears for 5 minutes, then drain them and give them a rinse in cool water. Pour the cooled dressing over the wood ear mushrooms and cover, keeping at room temperature for about an hour until service. If you are not serving the salad immediately, refrigerate the wood ears.
5. Right before service, toss the dressing, wood ears, and fresh veggies together in a large bowl. Spoon into a serving bowl and garnish with the optional garlic mustard micro greens or bean sprouts.

Cooking with Hen of the Woods

Hens roasted with a white miso glaze, served over forbidden and white rice cooked in hen broth

Autumn came a bit early this August and September with very cool nights and comfortable days, stimulating the fruiting of a favorite fall fungi, the hen of the woods, maitake, or Grifola frondosa. Some weekends we are so busy with lectures and walks that we don't have much time to forage for our own pantry, but hen season can get us out in the woods all week long. For about two weeks, we brought home dozens of beautiful hens; then the weather got hot again, making it uncomfortable being out in the woods hauling many pounds of mushrooms. Autumn conditions have returned, so we hope for another hen flush out in the woods of southern New England.

The pores of a hen on the underside of a frond

white spore print

Hens are one of the polypores, meaning if you look on the underside of one of the many fronds, you will see many holes from which this fungus drops its white spores. They don't have a true cap-and-stem appearance, rather they have many branched stems from a main core that are topped with fan-shaped fronds. Hens are saprobic and a mild parasite on hardwood trees as well, causing a white butt rot. They are sometimes referred to as perennial, as they will continue to fruit at the same location until they have exhausted their food supply. A hen of the woods can be collected by cutting them off at their base, and are good edibles as long as they are firm with white pores. They should be left behind if they are getting a yellow-orange mold on their base, have obvious signs of consumption by wild animals, are growing with poison ivy, or have obvious signs of a fungus fly maggot infestation or a serious case of springtails. Respect your wild food and only collect prime specimens!

Hen burgers made from the ground bits

Combined with their abundance, their texture and flavor make hen of the woods one of our  favorite wild mushrooms to find. They are full of umami, a savory taste that can be described as brothy or meaty. It can be substituted for chicken in any familiar dishes, as its flavor is excellent and the texture of hens is substantial. We like to use hens in many regional cuisines, roasted with an Asian white miso sauce, made into an Italian panelle patty, ground and cooked into American burgers (recipe here) or "meat"loaf, a Mexican tomatillo, hominy, and hen stew, or a French-style tapenade (recipe here).

Lots and lots of dehydrated hen jerky, vacuum packed for the year

Hens can vary in size, growth configuration, and color, most likely based on age and growing conditions. Hens can be large and frondy, or smaller and more compact with smaller fronds. Their growth determines their best use in culinary applications: the larger fronds make the best jerky (recipe here), while the more compact specimens slice up nicely into "steaks" for roasting. When cleaning hens for jerky, we try to keep the core as solid as possible, and then slice it up for larger pieces.

Vegan hen sausages with a potato pancake and pickled ramps

The bits leftover after culling the biggest fronds for jerky get ground up for burgers or a loaf. We also dehydrate a lot of the smaller pieces to use all year in gravy and soups, or saute and then freeze the small bits for use all year. The smaller bits also work very well in our vegan sausage recipe (recipe here). Overall, hens are an easy and delicious fall fungi forage!

Hen tapenade

Tomatillo, hominy, and hen stew

Duchesse mashed potatoes filled with cooked hen bits, baked until firm

Wild rice and hen soup

Baked ravioli filled with hen and goat cheese

Spring Fungi of Connecticut

As we are not usually successful morel hunters, we are beyond thrilled to find more recently after a CVMS foray. We  hiked with a couple of friends and shared the haul, along with jelly ears and marshmallow-stage hemlock reishi. 

Foragers Asparagus, Ramps, and Morel Risotto

Since we don't get many morels (Morchella americana) each year with which to experiment and cook in various ways while fresh, we usually simply dehydrate them to concentrate their flavor and use at a later date. 

Savory Cornmeal and Ramps Waffles with Morel Madeira Gravy

With the two dozen or so we have found this year, we did manage to make some Morels in Madeira Gravy over Savory Ramps Waffles, and some Morel and Asparagus Risotto.
 

Wood ears

Jelly ears (Auricularia auricula-judae) are the black fungus you eat when you order hot and sour soup. Their flavor is pretty non-existent, but they have an interesting crunchy-jelly texture in stir fries and soups. There are a few dark brown jellies that grow on wood, but only true jelly ears have a fuzzy "top". The other jellies (Exidia recisa or E. glandulosa) are edible as well.

The immature hemlock reishi (Ganoderma tsugae) are tender and solid when still small and pure white, a decent edible, but nothing special. Simply pan fried and hit with some salt, they crisp up nicely. Once they grow a bit more and start showing the orange-red varnished outer coating, they are too fibrous and bitter to eat, but can be collected and used as a medicinal mushroom.

#morels #jellyears #reishi #wildmushrooms #the3foragers #wildfood #foraging

Milky Mushroom Chowder

The winter Mushroom University classes that we attend in New York feature a potluck lunch. Robert cooked up a Milky Mushroom Chowder with the salt brined mixed Lactarius/Lactifluus mushrooms we preserved last year.

The three species are L. hygrophoroides, L. volemus, and L corrugis. They are preserved by first boiling the mushrooms for about 15 minutes, then layering them in a glass jar with nothing but sea salt and a few bay leaves. Within a few days, the salt will draw the excess moisture from the mushrooms and there will be enough liquid covering the mushrooms. To eat the mushrooms or use them in a recipe, they need to be soaked for a few days in several changes of fresh water to remove the excess salt. Then they can be cooked vigorously in soups or eaten with a good eastern European bread. The milky mushrooms retain an excellent texture this way, which is great since they don't dry and reconstitute well and we are limited on our freezer space.

L. corrugis has white milk, light orange gills, matching brown cap and stem, and often a corrugated cap.

 Lactarius/Lactifluus fungi are unique in that they bleed a colored milky substance when cut or scratched, if they are fresh; dried or older specimens will not have as much milk.  The color of the milk can range from clear to white, yellow, orange, or even blue. The milky substance can sometimes carry an odor like fish, and can stain your skin or anything else it touches.

L. hygrophoroides has white milk, creamy colored gills, a matching light orange-brown cap and stem, and widely spaced gills

Lactarius/Lactifluus are related to Russulas, the crumble-cap mushrooms, but don't disintegrate as easily. The cell walls of Russulas are more breakable and crumbly than most fungi due to shorter, more globular cells vs. elongated, fibrous cells of most fungi. Lactarius/Lactifluus have similar cells, so they cut cleanly and have a wonderful crunchy texture once cooked or salted. 

L. volemus has lots of white milk, creamy colored gills, a matching light golden orange cap and stem, and often emits a fishy odor from the milk that goes away when cooked

In a relatively rainy summer, the milky mushrooms will fruit in mostly hardwood forests in crazy amounts. 2016 was dry and we collected very few, but they all went into the salt brine. The edible species Lactarius/Lactifluus are among our list of favorite edible fungi because of their great texture and taste. Not all species of milky mushrooms are edible, please do further research or join your local mushroom club to learn the local mushrooms where you live.

Wild Mushrooms of Polipoli Springs, Maui, Hawaii, 2016

We usually head out to a warm and tropical location during the middle of a New England winter, so we did a little research into the fungi of one of our destinations, Maui. A good deal of the fungi on Hawaii are alien, introduced with vegetation and soil from other places, therefore, many of the mushrooms are familiar to us. Only an estimated 17% of fungi are considered native Hawaiian species. Fungi can be found almost all year in the subtropical environments, but the more abundant season is from July through January. Fallen palm leaves and casuarina needles, along with dead wood, coconut husks, lawns, and compost piles of mulch are all good places to look for fruiting mushrooms. We purchased Mushrooms of Hawaii by Don Hemmes and Dennis Desjardin to help us identify the mushrooms we found. On Maui, we had to rent a Jeep to ascend to Polipoli Springs State Recreation Area.

Once a dense forest of Koa, mamane, and ʻohiʻa lehua, the Polipoli Spring State Recreation Area is composed of 10 acres of the Kula Forest Reserve. When the park was established many of the native trees were removed. However, in the 1930s the the area was reforested with pines, eucalyptus, tropical ash, cypress, China-fir, and redwood. Due to the elevation (6,200 feet), Polipoli Spring State Recreation Area can actually get pretty cold (temperatures can reach freezing at night). When we headed up at 9 am, there was frost on the grasses and trees, and the mud puddles were crusted with ice. The Jeep was for the clearance and 4 wheel-drive needed to get through some of the holes in the dirt road, and some of the switchbacks at elevation without anything but sheer mountain out the window were a bit terrifying for me, but Robert was laid back about it all, and even had fun driving. We walked a 5-mile loop around a few trails, passing through dense stands of eucalyptus, thimbleberry thickets, assorted conifers planted in rows, into low-hanging clouds that would white out the trail, and by hills heavily blanketed in moss.

Before we got to the parking lot at the top of Polipoli, we passed a couple of familiar fungi on the drive up. First was a Laetiporus gilbertsonii, a relative of our eastern choice edible Laetiporus sulphureus, growing on eucalyptus. Even though it exuded juice when cut, it was as hard as wood. Due to its condition and suspicion in causing upset stomachs because of substrate, we didn't collect it for consumption. Then we passed some Hypholoma fasiculare growing roadside in some wood chips, another we recognize from our cooler, wet autumn season in Connecticut.

Starting out on the grassy portion of the trail, we ran into this butterscotch-colored beauty, possibly one of the Gymnopilus species? Here you can also see the just-melted dew covering the grass.

This is another one we recognize from home, Tricholomopsis rutilans, common name plums and custard. It is usually found growing attached to underground conifer roots, even though it appears to originate in grass.

Plenty of down dead wood up at Polipoli to support saprobic fungi. The cooler temperatures at elevation provided us with some familiar fungi we find in temperate Connecticut, like these two crusts, Phlebia tremellosa and Stereum hirsutum.

This puffball appeared similar to one of our pigskin puffballs, except for the extensive pseudo-stem. Our Mushrooms of Hawaii book IDs this as Scleroderma verrucosum due to the pink staining when the peridium is cut.

This brightly colored and small (most specimens were about 1 cm wide) polypore is the highly photogenic Favolaschia calocera. First observed in Madagascar, it has recently spread around the world and mycologists fear that it may be displacing native fungi species as it spreads through the paleotropics. Once Robert first noticed it on decayed twigs and fern stalks and we knew what to look for, we all suddenly spotted it often.

Chroogomphus sp. is a fungi we found a few years ago when making our first attempt to ascend to Polipoli (in a regular rental car, we never made it past the first 200' on the dirt road before bottoming out and turning around). Known to be associated with conifers in winter in California, this was likely introduced with the planted conifers. This may be C. vinicolor or C. rutilans, we didn't collect a specimen and scope the spores (hey, vacation!).

There are not too many Boletes in Hawaii, beyond a few Suillus and the elusive coconut-associated bolete, Pulveroboletus (Buchwaldoboletus) xylophilus. This Suillus pungens was a big surprise, as it isn't listed in the Mushrooms of Hawaii book, but it IS listed in the Mushrooms of the Redwood Coast, another book we own. This mushroom is normally associated with Monterey Pines, and was likely imported by accident with the conifer plantings done in the 1930's as well.

And as we were heading out of Polipoli in the late afternoon, Gillian asked a question from the back seat of the Jeep as we were driving along the dirt road that was cut into the grassy embankment, "Hey, isn't that a morel?". Haha, very funny, you can't fool us. BUT IT WAS. The weather at Polipoli mimics our southern New England weather in May very well: cold nights, warm days, and plenty of rain, so it makes sense. Morchella are reported in Hawaii, but fruiting in a scattered manner and difficult to see because of the dense undergrowth.

Planted conifers in Polipoli