MUSHROOM NEWSLETTER
May 8 2008

At last – they’ve arrived! Spring is here and the omens seem good!

Although morels signal the start of the mushroom season in many areas, unfortunately these do not grow here, thanks to our acid soil. Instead it is St George’s that mark the beginning of a season which should last from now until Christmas. As most readers no doubt realise, St George’s are named after the saint’s day on which they are supposed to emerge (23 April), but May Day is usually more like it. All the same, I have been eagerly anticipating their arrival for over a fortnight, but things were delayed by the cold weather at Easter. A quick check last week revealed nothing, but then a burst of rain and the sudden rise in temperature changed everything.

A couple of e-mails from newsletter subscribers prompted me to check my patches again and sure enough, the first ‘buttons’ are beginning to emerge. In a matter of 10 minutes I had picked enough for an omelette. As a born optimist, I like to think that bad fungal years are usually followed by a good season (eg the drought of 2004 was followed by the bumper harvest of 2005). So finding plenty of fragrant fungi almost bang on cue has cheered me up immensely.

Unfortunately, they do not seem to dry particularly well, but one local chef stores them by flash-frying and freezing. Personally, I prefer to treat them like strawberries and new potatoes – only eating them very fresh and in season. The flavour is strong – too strong for some palates – but I consider them to be one of our best wild mushrooms. They work well with chicken or rabbit, but the great Roger Phillips suggests cooking them as a flan or sautéed in yoghurt (see www.rogersmushrooms.com).

St George’s have a velvety cap and a strong, mealy, smell

I have already mentioned readers’ feedback. This is really welcome, so keep it rolling in. Frequently it contains interesting snippets of information. For example Penny from Somerset wrote in some alarm on 7 May about her partner’s reaction to a wild mushroom meal:

“John, and I only pick and eat fungi if we are 100% certain we know what they are. We start looking for St George's Mushrooms towards the end of April and we picked and ate a few two weeks ago. Then yesterday, we found masses of them growing on the grassy slopes of an ancient hill fort and picked about 20 . . . Back home I fried them in butter and gave most to John as he loves them so and he commented several times on how tasty the mushrooms were.

“About four hours later, he was violently sick and again about an hour later. I had no repercussions at all. We have never been sick after eating wild fungi before and I have never known John to be sick for any reason, so this was a real shock and very frightening. He seems fine this morning and I am very sure from their location, appearance, smell and taste and the time of year, they are St Georges.”

This sort of reaction is more common than many mushroom-hunters realise. Wild fungi – particularly the stronger flavoured ones – can be indigestible, especially in large quantities. The nearest I have ever come to poisoning someone was a case of this. A couple came on one of my breaks and were so enthused they stayed on to collect their own porcini, bay boletes and hedgehog fungus. That evening they ate their haul and the wife suddenly felt very dizzy and had extreme hot and cold flushes. Now it is very difficult to mistake any of these three mushrooms, so I was very puzzled. The answer came when I pressed for details of the meal – they ate around a pound of wild mushrooms in a cream and white wine sauce with lashings of parmesan on fresh pasta. In other words, they seriously over-loaded their digestive tracts. The man was able to take it, but his girlfriend was taken ill. It goes without saying that in both these cases, the victim’s distress considerably heightened by the fungal link – with every retch or flush, each imagined they might be in the terminal stages of mushroom-poisoning.

A friend who claims to be Britain’s only full-time professional mushroom picker agrees such reactions to fungi are surprisingly common. The problem is people treat powerfully flavoured wild mushrooms in the same way they would use their bland, cultivated, relatives. Instead he recommends treating them more as a herb or spice than a major ingredient – particularly on the first outing. All mushrooms, however delicious, will disagree with someone, somewhere. So stick to modest quantities on the first occasion and, as a rule of thumb, about 2oz (50g) per person is usually about right.

That said, I am pleased to report both ‘poisoning’ victims made a rapid and total recovery. Better still, they vow to continue picking and eating wild mushrooms – only in more modest quantities from now on. This is very unlike a friend who dined on ‘safe’ field mushrooms, only to find they were yellow stainers. She spent a long night in the loo and has never touched any wild fungi since – a real pity because she has a fantastic porcini patch barely 100 yards from her door.

St George’s make a great omelette, but be careful with the quantities (7 May 2008)