One of our favorite things about hunting and eating wild mushrooms is the wonderful influence that terroir brings to our food. The vivid recall with each delicious, mushroomy bite of the trees and colors and smells and camaraderie of the forest. which is imprinted by a very firm sense of place. Being a forager allows you to experience these gifts of nature, giving you a strong knowing that where your food comes from, as well as the work you put into finding and preparing it, is important.
If you are already a seasoned forager, you know there is a healthy amount of work associated with utilizing your bounty. We endeavor to explore not only a selection of delicious cuisine and new methods of cooking these wild edibles, but also the question of how to preserve and enjoy your sporadic harvests all year long. Jow many different ways can you prepare a bolete? What can you do with a truckload of fresh chanterelles? How can you best preserve the matsutake flavor to impart later into your cuisine? Let's answer these questions!
If you are new to the wild and wonderful world of edible forest fungi, there is something for you here as well. While this is not a comprehensive mushroom hunting guidebook (always get a good identification book - or two or three - for your region), you will find a wealth of tips and and tricks for harvesting each mushroom, along with general cooking techniques and suggested preservation methods. We highlight seventeen of our favorite wild edible fungi, popular across a wide range of geographic regions. Tips from leading foragers about hunting, preparing, and cooking will provide extra insight and help shorten your learning curve.
This book is as much a celebration of people as it is of mushrooms and cooking. As foragers, we each have that defining moment - the moment in which we know that something special has taken root. Like a burn morel waiting for the fiery embers that will allow it to flourish, foraging is a deeply buried need driven by age-old genetics. The awakening can be sudden, but it is not to be ignored.....
By Kristen and Trent Blizzard