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.
ovoli
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!
leccino
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!