conscious eating
FORAGED FUNGI FARE
Cooking with Wild Mushrooms
ivan kmitAdobeStock.com
by April Thompson
W
ild mushrooms can infuse exciting new flavors and textures into familiar dishes, along with a taste of the local terroir, the natural habitat, from woods to plate. “I first encountered wild mushrooms through local foragers, then later from specialty food purveyors who would fly mushrooms from around the world into our kitchen. They were the most unique ingredients I could find, offering colors, flavors and textures I had never experienced … pure catnip for a chef,” says Alan Bergo, a Minnesota chef and author of The Forager Chef ’s Book of Flora. Recipes at ForagerChef. com feature more than 60 species of wild edible fungi, from common deer mushrooms to prized porcinis. The intriguing flavors of wild mushrooms in part come from their diets, akin to the difference between grain- and grass-fed meats. “For fungi, their food is their habitat. Cultivated mushrooms have less variety of the micronutrients and secondary metabolites that can add flavor to a wild mushroom,” says Eugenia Bone, a New York City food journalist and editor of Fantastic Fungi: The Community Cookbook. Foraged fungi also offer a host of nutritional benefits surpassing commercially
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Natural Awakenings of Northwest Florida
www.NaturalAwakeningsNWF.com
grown mushrooms. Wild mushrooms like chanterelles and morels can contain up to 1,200 international units (IU) of vitamin D per serving, whereas commercial mushrooms, typically grown in dark conditions, contain less than 40 IU, according to the Harvard School of Public Health. While foraging is the most satisfying way to procure wild mushrooms, they are becoming increasingly available through farmers’ markets, online purveyors and gourmet stores. Some species that grow wild throughout North America such as oysters, maitake (hen of the woods) and lion’s mane are also grown
