Mushrooms

This year has seen a very heavy crop of mushrooms and fungi on the smallholding. Unfortunately this has happened before we have become anywhere near proficient in identifying mushrooms and they have been little use to us.

Each time we find one I spend about 45 minutes on the web comparing the mushroom with the specimens there. Is it red or pink ? Brown or Beige ? Large or small ? Has it got a ring on its stem ? What are the gills like ? Does it drive a volvo ? The end result of this, everytime, is that I am sure I have found a mushroom never before seen in Europe. I'll have to contact the World Mushroom Taxonomy Centre to register these new species.

Though to be truthful this doesn't happen everytime. The commonest outcome is that it looks quite like mushroom X and mushroom X is edible and safe. But it also looks quite like Mushroom Y and mushroom Y is either poisonous or probably poisonous. The more time you spend looking at the pictures, and reading the symptoms of poisoning, the more it looks like mushroom Y and the less appetizing becomes the musky aroma and meaty taste of mushroom X.

Even the puffballs prove themselves to be devious little critters. I was previously under the mistaken impression that you couldn't go wrong with these. I had thought that they were easy to identify - they look like balls and can puff - and all varieties are edible.

This is true but with a pretty hefty caveat.

The Fly Agaric mushroom (amanita muscarina) is the red and white toadstool we all know from fairy stories and the amanita mushrooms account for 90% of all mushroom poisoning fatalities. When the fly agaric is a baby it is covered with a universal veil which makes it look like a small button which could  conveniently be mistaken for a small puffball if it is not opened and checked.

Further, there are also earthballs which are not puffballs but can be poisonous, but not usually fatally. The Pigskin poison puffball is one of these. This has been handily called a puffball so as to allow confusion between an edible and a poisonous species.

It seems that a lot of the pleasure in eating mushrooms is like the fun of bungee jumping; it feels is if it might kill you , it will probably cause sweating, diarrhoea, panic attacks and fear, but if you survive you can tell people you did it. If you die then people can confirm their impression of you as stupid and feckless.

Part of me feels it should be easier than this. The information at our fingertips should now make this easy. You should be able to log on, answer a series of questions, and identify your mushroom. But I understand the problem.

I wouldn't want to be running the site that says - yes, that probably brown, or maybe pink, medium sized, small mushroom with the cream (or is it yellow?) gills, yes that one is safe to eat. Go ahead fry it up and feed it to yourself and your family. We'll pay the hospital bills and the funeral directors fees should you have go it wrong.

Like everyone else I'd run a site saying - well, maybe, you could maybe eat it but it is a little bit like that poisonous one that causes explosive diarrhoea, agonizing pain and death because there is no known antidote. Is it worth it to pad out your breakfast ? Fry another egg or nick out to the shop and buy a carton of button mushrooms.

So we will have to do it the old fashioned way. We'll go on the fungus foray next week. At the end we will be taken into a potting shed where the grand mushroom master will show us some edible mushrooms. We will swear the oath, and sign in blood, that we will never let people know which are the edible mushrooms (other than those that come in a can or a punnet).

We will then collect some edible mushrooms and eat them. We'll feel anxious, and still hungry, for 8 to 10 hours while we worry (was that more russet than brown?) before enjoying the sense of relief that we are not dead.

It will then dawn on us that many people go through their entire lives never having eaten a mushroom. We will remember that we can only think of one recipe that has mushrooms at its heart. And we will know that there is a reason for this.