AN ABUNDANCE OF MUSHROOMS

March has brought a pleasant start to the autumn months. Small falls of rain dampened the ground followed by days of cool, misty weather providing the ideal temperature for field mushrooms to grow naturally on our farm land.

My earliest memories of gathering field mushrooms began when as a young child I accompanied my grandmother across the grass flats beside the Myall Creek flowing down from the Bunya Moutains. It was Gran who taught me how to gather the mushrooms and tell the difference between them and other forms of fungi. Then with our 2 gallon stainless steel milking bucket filled with mushrooms we would proudly carry them home. A few of the large flat mushrooms would be sprinkled with salt and placed on the hot iron top of the wood fired kitchen stove  where they would sizzle and turn black before we popped this treat into our mouths. That night the family enjoyed a thick mushroom soup for dinner.

Those were the days when factory farmed mushrooms were not available in our shops and tinned mushrooms were tasteless small champignons.

Walking out one morning this week I spotted wild field mushrooms growing in the grass beside our home Das Helwig Haus B&B.

Wild mushrooms

In this post I will tell you how to gather such mushrooms, explain the differences between them an other poisonous varieties of fungi and then how to prepare wild field mushrooms for meals.

After sighting these first mushrooms I returned to the house for buckets and a sharp knife. Although mushrooms may be pulled from the damp soil, I prefer to cut mine cleanly to avoid gathering dirt.

It wasn’t long before I hit the jackpot – a fairy ring of mushrooms. My dictionary gives the definition of champignon as any of various agaricaceous edible mushrooms, especially Marasmius oreades (fairy ring champignon) and the meadow mushroom derived from the Latin campus plain or field.

Fairy ring

These fairy rings are supposedly created by cattle spreading the spores in a ring. We allow our Cannavo neigbours (mentioned in my book Wildflowers, wilderness and wine ) to graze their cattle on our land as a rotational way of spelling their paddocks. This saves us the expense of grass cutting, plus our soil receives added nutrient from their manure and the field mushrooms are encouraged to grow.

Cattle grazing

Frequently I came across mushrooms strung out in lines.

Wild mushrooms

As you can see from this photograph that when mushrooms push up through the crust of the ground they will carry dirt on their tops. In this way they are not as clean as factory farmed mushrooms. Thrusting my knife under them, I slice through the stem, brush off any loose dirt and then lay them face down in my bucket so no dirt falls into the fleshy underneath of the mushroom.

I could see just by a glance that these were all field mushrooms. When their flesh is revealed it may be any shade from pale pink in the champignon sized mushrooms through to brown and black in the larger ones, according to age.

Mushroom colours

I don’t bother with cutting the shriveled ones which I know will be black, preferring to leave them in the ground to continue spreading their spores for future crops. I only gather the small champignons and broader pink or brown fleshy mushrooms.

Do not gather any fungi growing under trees. Note the shape and colour of these poisonous toadstools. They have long brown stems, a brown speckled top and white flesh.

Toadstools

Another form of fungi I frequently see here are the puff balls.

Puff ball

Puff balls have thick stems and a solid head, which when cut open will reveal a pale yellow flesh. They grow large and when mature, if kicked will spread golden powder spores across the ground.

It is possible to find all these varieties of fungi growing in the same period of time after rain, but I have never seen them growing together.

Mushroom buckets

After carrying my harvested mushrooms home, I spread them out on my kitchen work bench.

Harvested mushrooms

As the skins on these mushrooms are dirty it is necessary that they be peeled. Although time consuming it is an easy task. Holding the mushroom by its stem, slide a knife under the white frill overlapping the flesh of the mushroom and lift. You will find that the skin easily peels back to the crown on the mushroom. I then break the larger mushrooms into portions.

Cleaned mushrooms

The last step is to stir fry the mushrooms in butter until the flesh become black and begins to shed juice. Of course some will be eaten immediately, but excess cooked mushrooms can be frozen for future use. There are two noticeable differences between these wild mushrooms and factory farmed mushrooms. The white skin portion of the wild ones is thinner than the bought specimens and the flavour is much stronger. Wild mushrooms are a quality product!

Mushroom germination requires rain to wet the soil, followed by cloudy days with little variation between day and night temperatures. These conditions do not occur every year, but when they do it is usually in March, the first month of autumn, or in November, the last month of spring. In my book Wildflowers, wilderness and wine I tell of gathering mushrooms in November.

Book cover

Das Helwig Haus B&B owned by Eberhard and Fay Helwig is situated at Glen Aplin, near Stanthorpe on the Granite Belt of southern Queensland, Australia.

This is a region noted for Australian wildflowers, four wilderness National Parks and sixty wineries. In 1997 Eberhard and Fay established the Remembrance Field of red Flanders poppies, a European wildflower.

To obtain Fay’s book Wildflowers, wilderness and wine send an email to helwig@halenet.com.au The price is $33.00 posted to destinations within AustraIia.

Internationally it is available on

http://stores.lulu.com/strictlyliterary

http://books.google.co.uk/