Yet more foraging..
Another post about foraging, a food blog was never my intention, but, heigh ho, it seems to be a theme right now so I am going with the flow. This week, for the first time ever, I cut and ate a bracket fungus, known as Chicken of the woods (proper name Laetiporus sulphureus). The tree on which it was growing was in the north of Milton Keynes. If anyone ever tells you MK is all concrete cows and roundabouts you might like to let them know that it is a city of 22 million trees and more to come. It has some wonderful green areas and it is possible to walk almost the entire length of the town through green space, following rivers or the canal.
Hopefully in cutting the mushroom I did the right thing. I went armed with a sharpened knife and cut as close as I could to the trunk without damaging other parts of it. Someone else had been to the tree before me and had, by the look of it, taken an entire outcrop , but it was interesting to see that already new mushrooms were beginning to form, pushing their way through the hyphae where the cuts had been made.
How did I know it was edible? A combination of internet research and my daughter and her boyfriend who are wild mushrooms lovers, helped me to have confidence that this was indeed Chicken of the woods and not something else. An important characteristic is the very beautiful lemon yellow gills on the underneath of the fungus. The picture below shows the delicacy of colour of the underside.
Having read a few recipes for the mushroom I decided to create something of my own and put together a batter of lemon juice, gluten-free flour, chickpea flour with a little water and a sprinkling of black pepper. I dunked the pieces of mushroom in this and shallow fried them.
I ate the mushrooms with roast potatoes, mashed sweet potato and a medley of vegetables in vegan cream which worked well. The fungus is delicious, it’s texture is astonishingly like chicken as I remember it (though I am an unreliable witness as it is a few decades since I ate it) and the taste is very similar too. I have future plans to try cooking it in a garlicky sauce which I think would work well.
I kept the pieces of mushroom that I did not cook in the fridge in their paper bag and a couple of days later sauted them in vegan butter so that I could freeze them. Word on the net is that it is better to do this than freeze them raw as they need to have less water in them to freeze without going flaccid. I tasted a little before they went in the freezer and they were really nice just plain, so I would be happy to eat them like that too.
I have to admit I was a little nervous about eating a foraged mushroom, but having done once so I will be looking out for this particular delicacy. I was quite controlled about how much I took, in my opinion taking only as much as you might use for a couple of meals seems fair, to enable everyone who wants to to have a share.
Life Gathers 