Mad about Mushrooms . . .

Super Bowl 2016 in the Refuge

Our annual Super Bowl party in the Refuge was another resounding success. 

No, we don't have any tales to tell about quarterbacks and MVP's, field goals and kickers.  Nor about the "wow" of the Wiener Stampede commercial.  Not even the extravagant half-time entertainment, featuring Coldplay, Beyonce and Bruno Mars. 

We're a lot more restrained here in the refuge, preferring instead the quiet that descends when one is wandering through the growths of tanoaks and conifers. 

And as far as the Super Bowl Most Valuable Player award goes, we're proud to nominate the mycellium that gave birth to a bumper crop of Hedgehogs (primarily H. umbiculatum) that grew in abundance again this year.  The fungi were in perfect condition, in spite of the pounding rains over the last month or two, with the caps substantial and firm.  

The drabber Yellowfoot Mushroom, often referred to as the Winter Chanterelle, enthusiastically joined our private party this year, and added a nice contrast to the Hedgehog collection in our basket.

Yes, for sheer entertainment and pleasure, there's nothing finer than a warm and sunny Super Bowl afternoon on a heavily wooded hill overlooking Redfish Rocks, collecting Hedgehogs and Yellowfoot Mushrooms to appreciate and to share with friends.  

 

 

Welcome, 2016!

 

Our summer included a lovely flight in a
1929 Travelair biplane over the central Oregon coast.

As we get older, we learn a few things not readily apparent to us when we were younger. At least, hopefully we do, and hopefully these lessons make it a bit easier for us to navigate life’s travails... the inevitable times when things don’t go entirely our way and we are disappointed.

In mushrooming, these disappointments aren’t infrequent: the places we’ve come to count on through years of experience for some reason fail to produce. Sometimes, this is due to conditions: the rains weren’t timely, or there’s been a dry spell, or perhaps a cold snap came at the wrong time. Occasionally, it’s because there has been wood cutting, property development or other environmental activity.

And sometimes, it’s simply because someone else got there before we did. It’s perhaps this latter situation that bothers us the most, but it can’t be helped; other folks want to gather mushrooms, too, and we ourselves have probably done this to others more often than we’d care to admit, either consciously or not. The

          Springtime brought us Verpa,
     accompanied by cottonwood seeds.

Most of all, though, these disappointments arise because things change, and it’s not always to our liking. But whether we like it or not, change will come, in mushrooming and in life.

Mary and I went to a long-time favorite Asian restaurant in Portland the other day. They’ve featured a signature dish that we really loved for well over ten years (revealing what it was might also reveal the identity of the restaurant, and that isn’t our intent). Over the years, the consistent excellence of this particular dish was amazing; it was always simply wonderful. The service wasn’t always great, and other menu items were merely OK, but this one dish was the best of its kind we’d ever encountered.

The last time we visited this restaurant, we were surprised to find that it wasn’t anywhere near as good. We certainly know that any and all restaurants can have an off day; the regular cook could be off, there could be lots of reasons. But we said something about it to one of the owners as we left, not in a mean-spirited way, but because we sincerely felt that they would want to know, and our comment seemed to be received in the spirit it was offered.

So we were mindful of this earlier visit when we went there the other day, hopeful, but prepared that things might not have improved. And they hadn’t; if anything, our beloved dish was worse than before. It's a simple dish, with few ingredients, and a change in sources was highly unlikely to have been the cause; the cause was doubtless in the preparation. They just weren’t making this dish the same way, and it really showed.

As we left, I told the owner - a different one than I’d talked to before. This time, the reaction was different, too. My comments, even though courteously and sincerely offered, were clearly not taken seriously, as if I simply didn’t know what I was talking about. OK, that’s his prerogative, and they still seem to be doing a pretty decent business, but from now on, they will do so without us. This restaurant isn’t the same one we came to know and love... it’s changed. And we won’t be back.

     Our travels last year took us far afield
        to South Dakota, and, of course, we
                    went mushrooming.

The lesson here is that restaurants we love and mushrooming places we love and all kinds of other things we've learned to love in life inevitably change with the passage of time. We don’t like it, but that’s the way it is. We can bemoan this fact and let it ruin our day if we so choose, but it will happen regardless. And how we react is the lesson learned.

We must always remember to really appreciate those wonderful places that we have come to love. Enjoy them, treasure them while we have them. Some will last as long as we do, but some will not, and will fall by the wayside. It’s simply inevitable. This is frustrating; it takes time and effort to find new places to dine and new places to mushroom and all those other things, but we simply must expend it... even though we don’t particularly want to.

We get lazy, we see no reason to find new places when we already have as many as we can handle. But then we lose one, for whatever reason; we must either find a new one or two to replace it, or we must accept having less. We must find new restaurants, and new places to mushroom, and new all kinds of other things that we lose with the passage of time, just to maintain our current level, let alone advance it.  And along the way, we’ll encounter new things, learning as we go, and in the end, we'll find new places that we'll come to love just as much.

That is our thought for 2016: enjoy and treasure our favorites, but summon the energy and curiosity to find new places and things to replace those we inevitably lose. Have a great year, and as always, thank you for being one of our readers!

Offshore and onshore rock formations make for a dramatic
land and seascape near our home in the hamlet of Port Orford.

Hedgehogs 101

Any tasty edible mushroom that extends our season by appearing either earlier or later than other mushrooms would be an automatic favorite of ours. Such is the case with Hydnum, fondly referred to in this post using the Curry County name of choice: Hedgehog, or (less often) Sweet Tooth.

Hedgehogs have a lot of other fine qualities going for them besides their fruiting season.

• For one thing, they’re very common, relatively easy to find and predictable in their chosen habitats.
• Moreover, they usually come back to the same spots, year after year.
• They’re hardy, even withstanding light freezes which can signal the end of the season for many other mushrooms.
• They’re almost goof-proof, i.e. almost unmistakable for anything else - another plus that makes them ideal for novice mushroomers.
• They’re tasty, with a flavor and aroma much like Golden Chanterelles (which is a good thing to be “like!”) and are well suited for sautéing as an accompaniment to an entrée such as steak and for enhancing sauces.
• They preserve well, either by dehydrating or sautéing and then freezing in portion sized quantities.
• And they are beautiful, with colors ranging from tan to apricot to deep orange. Here in the refuge, there are times when they appear to almost glow from within the duff on the forest floor, particularly so when a light fog hangs in the air.

So, what’s not to like about Hedgehogs?

Hedgehogs can vary greatly in size.

Well, there are a couple of small niggles when it comes to Hydnum.

• Most of the Hedgehogs that we find in the refuge are H. umbiculatum which generally offer a pretty small cap – 1 to 2-1/2” diameter caps are the norm, although we've found individuals up to nearly 5”. Therefore, it takes a little longer than, say, Golden Chanterelles, to gather a significant quantity.
• Our Hedgehogs also seem to have an affinity for Rhododendrons, and that can mean crawling on hands and knees through a woody thicket to gather them – not my favorite way to harvest mushrooms, but sometimes a necessary evil.
• Lastly, they can be more challenging to clean than a lot of mushrooms. Removing the debris from among the tiny teeth that cover the underside of the cap where gills would normally be found can be frustrating, but this almost always happens as they join other mushrooms in your basket, not naturally.   The stems, however, are another matter; any part of the base of the stem that comes in contact with the soil almost invariably absorbs some of it in the outer layer, and it clings tenaciously;  forget washing or brushing it off. Yet, there is a fair amount of meat in the base, and if you are as averse to unnecessary waste in mushrooming as we are, simply cutting off the base isn’t always acceptable, either; our solution – time-consuming, but it works – is to trim this dirty area off the larger mushrooms with a knife, something like sharpening a pencil. Normally we do this in the field, and (although we're not sure this helps future fruitings) stuff the trimmings back into the hole from which they came. Call us crazy, but it seems unwise to anger the mushroom gods by being wasteful.  There are times, I have to confess, when we’re not so fussy about the stem. Thankfully, the stem easily snaps between one’s fingers, leaving the base of the Hedgehog in the ground while the upper part of the stem and cap are resting in one’s thankful hand!

Hedgehogs have "teeth" on the underside
of the cap rather than gills.

In Northwest Oregon and Southwest Washington, we normally expect to start finding Hedgehogs in mid to late October, and continue to find them for at least a month, often well into December if it doesn’t remain too cold for too long.

In Port Orford, on the Southern Oregon coast, Hedgehogs are typically later, like everything else. We customarily start seeing them in early November, or after the first frost. Frequently we can gather them into February - a Super Bowl Sunday Hedgehog Foray is a time-honored tradition for us!

There is always some overlap between the end of Golden Chanterelle season and the start of Hedgehogs, and indeed at first glance, the novice picker might mistake Hedgehogs for Chanterelles. On closer observation, though, you’ll see a subtle difference, as the Hedgehogs possess a somewhat paler cap. Turn the cap over and there can be no doubt: the teeth are a dead give-away.

The Hydnum's teeth (spines) on the underside of the cap are about 1/8 to 1/4 inch in depth and break fairly easily. They range in color from whitish to light brown and seem to darken with age.

Be aware that there are actually a number of toothed fungi that exhibit these icicle-like protrusions under the cap besides the Hydrum. These include the large capped Sarcodon, the tough and leathery Phellodon, the Bankera with a large fruit body and brittle flesh, and Hydnellum with a tough and fibrous cap.

Some members of the toothed fungi family are valued for dyeing wool rather than for their edibility. Some grow on wood; most are found on the forest floor. Some are fragrant and offer a pleasant aroma; others have no detectable smell. Caps range from deeply pitted to scaled and/or smooth with a color assortment that moves from gray to buff to dark reddish brown along with shades of yellow. Spores fluctuate from white to brown. One toothed fungi even exudes red droplets in wet weather! Toothed fungi certainly reveal an amazing variety of characteristics!

While there are a number of toothed fungi, it is the 2 species of white spore Hydnum (umbiculatum and repandum) that we encounter with great frequency and enthusiasm in the refuge and that are most commonly considered a choice edible.

This picture shows the variety of sizes
and shapes that hedgehogs display.

Now, how can you easily tell if you’ve collected H. umbiculatum or H. repandum?

• The H. repandum often has a cap that measures 2-6 inches and is irregularly shaped, a stem that is usually off center, habitually fruits in groups under hardwoods (although it sometimes can be spied resting under conifers), and presents a stem that is shorter and thicker than H. umbiculatum. The flesh in the convex cap is thick and substantial for the size of the mushroom.
• The H. umbiculatum is characteristically smaller in overall size than H. repandum, grows in clusters under conifers, and reveals a thinner flesh and darker teeth than H. repandum. Its stem is somewhat centered with a noticeable depression at the top center of the cap. Hence, its nickname of the “belly button mushroom.”

Does it really matter if the Hydnum is H. umbiculatum or H. repandum? Not to us. We don’t personally differentiate between the two Hydnum. The bottom line is that they are both lovely, tasty mushrooms, always welcome on our table, and they help us to extend our mushrooming season long after most other good edibles are all done for the year.

So, like we said earlier in this post: what’s not to like about Hedgehogs?

 

 

 

Our 2016 Winner: Justine Kmiecik's Mushroom Sushi "Mushrooms"

Congratulations to our 2016 winner, Justine Kmiecik!

“What's cuter than making little mushrooms out of mushrooms?” That’s the question that Justine Kmiecik, winner of our annual recipe contest, posed on her food blog, Night Shift Lunch Box, and that’s pretty much the same remark that we made when we saw the recipe she submitted in response to our contest.

How cute, the testers exclaimed when they saw Justine’s Mushroom Sushi 'Mushrooms', plump with a shiitake and leek stuffing in their stipe and topped with a shiitake cap that had been simmered in oyster sauce.

Cute is one thing, declared one taster; delicious is another. One bite, and all the tasters agreed that cute and delicious were synonymous in this case.

Some wondered out loud about how difficult it might be to create the perfect little stuffed sushi base. Simple, replied the chef; it takes only minutes to put the appetizer together.

One word of caution. The recipe suggests that these 6 pieces serve 6 people as an appetizer. Not so, based on our experience! Most of our tasters enthusiastically scooped 2 pieces off the serving dish onto their hors d'oeuvre plate, while coyly keeping an eye on the serving dish to see if and when seconds would be available. Our advice is to prepare 2-3 pieces per person. Yes, they are that delicious and that easy to make!

When we asked Justine if we might print a little about her on our website, she modestly forwarded the following information: 

Justine recently moved to Washington state with her husband, and has a background in plant and environmental biology. She ran a biotechnology startup in the energy space in North Carolina, and is passionate about gardening, art, and cooking.

Happy New Year in the refuge!

Yes, indeed, it's a very Happy New Year in our refuge!  Yellowfoot and Hedgehog Mushrooms were abundant in our usual patch when we were out exploring earlier today.  What a nice way to celebrate the beginning of a new year of mushrooming.

To be completely honest, we started our foray with more than a little trepidation.  Since returning to Port Orford from our holidays spent sailing the Norwegian fjords, there had hardly been any let up in the wintry weather pattern of thunder and lightning, pounding rains, hurricane force winds and goodness knows what else these past several weeks! 

Yet, this morning a tranquil landscape greeted us when we arose:  uninterrupted blue sky and gentle breezes whispering through the Tanoaks and Douglas Firs, while a resident flock of Dark-Eyed Juncos descended upon our well-stocked feeders (Thanks to Steven!) and a couple of Varied Thrushes lent their own kind of enthusiasm to the gathering.  What a perfect day to explore the woods, we thought!

And, we were right.  The mushroom gods gifted us with an abundance of Hedgehogs and a sprinkling of Yellowfoot Mushrooms.

Our first foray of the year rewarded us
with Hedgehogs and Yellowfoot Mushrooms.

February 2016's Recipe of the Month: Clodagh McKenna's Wild Mushroom & Chicken Liver Pate

Great recipes get passed around from friend to friend in an endless circle of good will and camaraderie.  Such it was that this recipe printed in Clodagh's Irish Kitchen arrived in my post office box early in January from a friend up North with the explanation that it was an exceptional find.  And, she was so right, as she is so often!

We're particularly fond of this pate because of the texture.  The wild mushrooms are cooked, finely chopped and then folded into the processed liver mixture, resulting in a more substantial pate than is often the case.   The pate is super creamy and melts almost immediately when spread on toast or warm bread.

Chef McKenna suggests serving the pate with warm, crunchy, white bread or traditional Irish soda bread or even brioche.  We found that it's also scrumptious spread on mini-bagels and accompanied by sweet gherkins and capers.  

When I prepared the pate with Hedgehogs that had been harvested earlier in the day and served it as an appetizer, Steven turned to me in all seriousness and said:  "Forget the rest of the dinner.  Save it for tomorrow night.  Tonight, all I want is to eat the rest of the pate!"

The Troy Hall B&B, Derry, located in an original grand  
manor house, circa 1890, offered us a lovely breakfast setting
when we were recently vacationing in Ireland.