mushroom hunting Archives - attheitaliantable.com

I’ve talked about wild mushrooms for years now and lots of people have asked me to take them mushroom hunting when they’re in Tuscany, but I’m not always able to oblige. The problem is, you never know when there will be mushrooms in the woods. It’s totally dependent on enough rain in the previous weeks. The ground has to get a good soaking with additional rain every now and then to keep it wet. In addition it should ideally stay warm to incubate the spores and often when the rains come, the weather turns cold. We had a really hot and dry summer and I despaired once again of having a decent mushroom season. We haven’t really had a great year since 2005.

Luckily it poured for the whole first week of September and, even though it interrupted a short beach vacation with my niece, it meant the beginning of a potentially good fall for fungus. Between constant soakings over the past two months and temperatures keeping relatively warm, we’ve had a plethora of all kinds of fungus. The mushrooms practically jump into your basket as you walk through the woods! I was convinced that I would finally be able to share a mushroom hunt with our November culinary group!

So after lunch two weeks ago, we put on sturdy shoes and headed into the woods. Two of the group had actually been mushroom hunting in the US and had an idea of what we were looking for. For the first half hour they each brought me every imaginable kind of inedible and poisonous mushroom that grows around here, and some were beginning to get disheartened that we weren’t finding anything good. Finally I took them to my secret area that I know to be rich with chanterelles and were rewarded with a treasure trove of the gorgeous, wavy yellow mushrooms. We also came across some porcini, leccini, hedgehogs and a few blewits. I let them know that the only reason I was sharing the location of my secret mushroom spot was because none of them live anywhere near Tuscany! Mushrooms come back in the same spot year after year and if you find a good area for mushrooms, you keep it a secret, even from your own family.

On the way back to the house to clean and saute our golden treasure, someone said “Why didn’t we just come here first?! Why did we wander all around the forest looking?”, to which I answered “Because then you wouldn’t have appreciated how difficult it can be!”

Wild Mushroom Saute’

1 lb wild mushroom mix (you can get a few ounces of wild and mix with some portabello and dried porcini)

2 tbsp olive oil

1 tbsp butter

1 large garlic clove, chopped

1 tbsp chopped parsley

sea salt

Wash the mushrooms to remove and dirt or forest debris. Soak any dried mushrooms in room temp water until soft. Chop the mushrooms into the desired size. Heat the olive oil, butter and garlic together, add the parsley and the mushrooms, salt to taste, and saute until they give up their water. Continue cooking the mushrooms until the water all cooks off and they start to sizzle in the pan. They’re delicious on toasted bread (crostini) or can be used for risotto or pasta. I love them as a side to grilled Italian sausage or folded into eggs!

wild mushroom crostini — Wild mushroom crostini

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I love being able to share my favorite places and foods with people who come for vacation to Tuscany and recently I got to share two of my favorite things: hunt for wild mushrooms and taste the new olive oil at the oil mill! Part 1 of My Favorite Things, a new ongoing blog topic, is Mushrooming.
I’ve talked about wild mushrooms for years now and lots of people have asked me to take them mushroom hunting when they’re in Tuscany, but I’m not always able to oblige. The problem is, you never know when there will be mushrooms in the woods. It’s totally dependent on enough rain in the previous weeks. The ground has to get a good soaking with additional rain every now and then to keep it wet. In addition it should ideally stay warm to incubate the spores and often when the rains come, the weather turns cold. We had a really hot and dry summer and I despaired once again of having a decent mushroom season. We haven’t really had a great year since 2005.
Luckily it poured for the whole first week of September and, even though it interrupted a short beach vacation with my niece, it meant the beginning of a potentially good fall for fungus. Between constant soakings over the past two months and temperatures keeping relatively warm, we’ve had a plethora of all kinds of fungus. The mushrooms practically jump into your basket as you walk through the woods! I was convinced that I would finally be able to share a mushroom hunt with our November culinary group!
So after lunch two weeks ago, we put on sturdy shoes and headed into the woods. Two of the group had actually been mushroom hunting in the US and had an idea of what we were looking for. For the first half hour they each brought me every imaginable kind of inedible and poisonous mushroom that grows around here, and some were beginning to get disheartened that we weren’t finding anything good. Finally I took them to my secret area that I know to be rich with chanterelles and were rewarded with a treasure trove of the gorgeous, wavy yellow mushrooms. We also came across some porcini, leccini, hedgehogs and a few blewits. I let them know that the only reason I was sharing the location of my secret mushroom spot was because none of them live anywhere near Tuscany! Mushrooms come back in the same spot year after year and if you find a good area for mushrooms, you keep it a secret, even from your own family.
On the way back to the house to clean and saute our golden treasure, someone said “Why didn’t we just come here first?! Why did we wander all around the forest looking?”, to which I answered “Because then you wouldn’t have appreciated how difficult it can be!”
Wild Mushroom Saute’
1 lb wild mushroom mix (you can get a few ounces of wild and mix with some portabello and dried porcini)
2 tbsp olive oil
1 tbsp butter
1 large garlic clove, chopped
1 tbsp chopped parsley
sea salt
Wash the mushrooms to remove and dirt or forest debris. Soak any dried mushrooms in room temp water until soft. Chop the mushrooms into the desired size. Heat the olive oil, butter and garlic together, add the parsley and the mushrooms, salt to taste, and saute until they give up their water. Continue cooking the mushrooms until the water all cooks off and they start to sizzle in the pan. They’re delicious on toasted bread (crostini) or can be used for risotto or pasta. I love them as a side to grilled Italian sausage or folded into eggs!

Wild mushroom crostini

Path:

It was another hot and dry summer and I despaired of ever seeing a mushroom in the woods again. We haven’t had a really good mushroom season in several years, the last I remember was 2005, and I longed for warm rain that would guarantee good hunting. And after months of clear blue skies and intense sunshine, it suddenly started to pour down rain the beginning of September. It’s surprising how quickly Mother Nature can bounce back from dry, desert-like conditions. All during September and October we’ve been treated to substantial rain, usually at night so as not to ruin our sunny days, just like in Camelot. And the mushrooms have cooperated by springing up all over the forest. Most of them aren’t edible and some of them are really extraordinary looking, but with stealth and patience you can find brown and white porcini and leccini, and bright orange ovoli, or amanita cesarea.

How do you distinguish what’s good to eat from what will kill you, cause you to need a liver transplant, or at the very least give you an upset stomach? That is of course the most important point: knowing what to pick and what to leave in the forest. I’ve been studying it for years, hunting with experts, asking the old people’s advice and consulting professionals. It’s such an important question that each community throughout Tuscany staffs a licensed mycologist, or mushroom expert, at various health facilities around town who have an open door policy: anyone who has collected mushrooms is encouraged to come and verify whether what they’ve found is edible or not.

Encouraged by various accounts of surprisingly big porcini found nearby, I headed into the woods yesterday and came up with several members of the boletus family, namely leccini and porcini.

I took my trove of 12 mushrooms in and the mycologist confirmed my leccini as being excellent, even photo worthy! So here’s the photo before I cook them!

It’s raining even as I type this. That means the mushroom season continues; constant rain and warm weather ensures that porcini and leccini continue to sprout, and when it gets too cool for those funghi, the chanterelles and black trumpets start coming up. As long as it rains and the ground stays damp, and until it freezes sometime in late December, we’ll have a variety of mushrooms in the forest. And that’s where you’ll find me this fall when I’m not in the kitchen: heading out the door with my mushroom basket in hand!

Sharing a few of my favorite things, Part 1

Mushrooms in the forest!