Just back from a trip to the West Coast where the morel mushroom season is in full swing, Cinda Chavich talked about this rare wild food on CBC radio. When the fresh morels appear in the market, it’s a sign that spring is really here.

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click here for morel mushroom recipes....

IT’S MOREL MUSHROOM SEASON?

Yes, I recently spent some time on Vancouver Island and as you know, they see spring a little sooner than we do. And on the island, it’s definitely wild morel mushroom season.

I met with chef Bill Jones who has a farm in the Cowichan Valley near Duncan, and he literally had a massive tub full of morel mushrooms that he was planning to serve at a special farm dinner that night.

He was making all kinds of things with his fresh morels – an Asian-inspired prawn and morel soup with coconut milk and curry paste, a traditional rabbit terrine, very French in style, studded with bacon and morel mushrooms, and venison loin with a sweet and sour mushroom sauce.

The whole theme of the evening was the first wild foods that appear in spring and morels are really the first sign of the new season – along with wild greens like nettles and fiddlehead ferns, morels are going to be showing up on restaurant plates across the country in the coming weeks.

ARE MORELS DIFFERENT FROM OTHER MUSHROOMS?

Well, they’re rather unique looking mushrooms. Morels are what I call a spongy looking mushroom – they are usually brown or dark grey, or even black, with lighter stems, and the caps are tall and conical, with a holey exterior texture, much like a sponge or a honeycomb. They look almost like a pine cone when you see them growing near the ground, so they are really tricky to spot.

The caps may be very small – less than an inch long – or quite large, up to a pound for a single specimen, the size of a man’s fist or larger, so they can be lovely little mushrooms to garnish a dish or add to a sauce, or perfect to stuff for a main dish or an appetizer.

SO WHERE CAN YOU FIND MOREL MUSHROOMS?

May is really prime morel mushroom season and morels are found across the country. They tend to appear right after the crocuses bloom, but they’re well camouflaged. Personally, I’ve never found them here but several local pickers have told me they come across them along the Bow River down in Fish Creek Park.

The thing about morels, is that they flourish anywhere the land has been disturbed. That can mean after a forest is cut or cleared, or an area is flooded, but most often after a forest fire.

They’re actually known as “fire mushrooms, ” because, for a year or two after a fire, morels are especially prolific. With all of the fires in recent years in central B.C., the morel crop has been quite good.

But you don’t need to be in the forest, or the mountains, to find mushrooms. The area east of Edmonton, known as Kalyna country, is known to be one of the best places in the province to forage for wild mushrooms. In Vilna, they even have the world’s largest mushroom – the town mascot is a giant 20-foot mushroom sculpture in a local park.

So you might even find some morels around Edmonton. But like most wild mushrooms, morels are quite fickle. You can never guarantee that you’ll find them.

Bill Jones wrote a book about mushrooms and says morels seem to like older growth forests, abandoned orchards and areas along roads and sandy stream banks. But he also says there’s an old saying about morels, “Morels grow anywhere but not everywhere.”

IS THERE ANY DANGER IN EATING MOREL MUSHROOMS – CAN THEY BE POISONOUS, OR IS THERE A POISONOUS MUSHROOM THAT MIMICS THE MOREL?

Morels are pretty distinctive looking, so there usually isn’t much danger if you have a classic specimen. That said, there is a similar mushroom – called an early morel or verpa – that can be make some people sick, and something called a Brain Mushroom which is very poisonous, so you need to be careful.

Even a true morel can cause reactions in some people, so be cautious the first time you try them. Raw mushrooms can cause allergic reactions, and combining morels and alcohol can lead to dizziness and mild tremors in many people.

HOW CAN YOU BE SURE YOU HAVE THE RIGHT MUSHROOM?

Buy them or hunt them with someone who knows. You should never go out foraging for mushrooms – or eat any wild mushrooms – unless you are a mushroom expert, or you have an expert with you. Some of the wild mushrooms growing in Alberta and B.C. are poisonous and quite deadly – so don’t head out to pick mushrooms on your own.

Even using a book to help identify mushrooms isn’t foolproof. So if you do not ABSOLUTELY know what you’ve picked, DO NOT EAT it!

If you want to learn about mushroom foraging, the best thing to do is to join a local mycological group. The Edmonton Mycological Society, for example, meets once a month in the Riverbend Public Library, and they have regular “forays” into the countryside to hunt for mushrooms. In fact, their website indicates that the next mushroom hunt will be May 12, to search for spring mushrooms, including morchella – morels – and verpa  - false morels - and spring agarics in the Aspen Parkland. They have educational sessions, and forays all year long, throughout the province so that’s an excellent way to learn more about wild mushrooms.

SO IF YOU DON’T FIND THEM YOURSELF IN THE WOODS, WHERE MIGHT YOU BUY THEM?

Well, look at the farmers markets and specialty food stores. Places like the Cookbook Company or Community Natural Foods usually have dried morels all year round. Mo Na Foods in Edmonton is the major wholesaler for fresh and dried mushrooms in Alberta.

But this is the season to ask your produce managers about fresh morels, too.

Mercato has fresh morels now and I talked to the produce people at Planet Organic and they said they should be able to order them this month – so ask for them this month, because they’re definitely being picked now on the west coast.

WHY ARE WILD MUSHRROMS SO EXPENSIVE?

There haven’t really been many successful attempts to cultivate wild mushrooms like morels, so they are quite expensive. There are some ongoing experiments to cultivate really rare and valuable fungus like truffles, and mushrooms like oyster mushrooms and shiitake mushrooms have been successfully cultivated.

But morels, like many wild mushrooms, need special symbiotic conditions, often with specific trees, to thrive. No one really understands how to artificially recreate those conditions, so morels and most other wild mushrooms are strictly foraged in the wild, which adds to the expense.

Also, the season for morels can be pretty short, and unreliable, as it’s always dependent on the amount of rain and heat. Professional mushroom pickers often have to go into some pretty extreme back country to find mushrooms, and there’s a lot of luck involved. Morels are very unpredictable. So expect to pay a fair bit for fresh wild mushrooms when you find them in stores. Fresh morels can retail for up to $50 a kg (more than $20 a pound), and dried they can seem even pricier – a pound or morels, once dried, is a mere 2 ounces. At the Cookbook Company, a little 35 g bag, about an ounce, is $22.95.

IS IT IMPORTANT TO FIND THEM FRESH OR ARE DRIED MUSHROOMS JUST AS GOOD?

Well, one thing about fresh mushrooms is you can pretty much guarantee that they didn’t travel too far – fresh mushrooms have a very short shelf life.

With global marketing, you might be buying dried mushrooms from halfway around the world – those dried morels might have been picked in Turkey or Mexico.

That said, the morel is one of the best mushrooms for drying. Once rehydrated in warm water, they retain good texture and are almost the same as a fresh specimen when you fry them up in butter and garlic. All dried mushrooms tend to have a more intense, concentrated flavor than fresh mushrooms, though, and most others are considerably chewier than fresh specimens.

ANY OTHER KINDS OF WILD MUSHROOMS AVAILABLE?

You often see chanterelle mushrooms from B.C. – usually a little later in the season. The Golden Chanterelle is a long vase- or goblet-shaped mushroom, a bright golden colour with flaring, ridged gills and a sweet fruity aroma, reminiscent of ripe apricots. There are also some tiny black chanterelles growing wild in Saskatchewan that occasionally turn up on local menus.

And if you’re lucky, someone will bring you a bag of pine mushrooms. These are also known as Matsutake – very valuable to Japanese and Chinese cooks – and they have a wonderful sweet, nutty flavour and spicy aroma. One of my personal favourites.

HOW SHOULD YOU STORE THEM?

You can keep mushrooms fresh in the refrigerator for several days if you wrap them loosely or cover them in paper towels and keep them in a basket. Air circulation is the key. Too much moisture – say, inside a plastic bag – and they’ll be slimy in no time.

If you want to dry them yourself, use a dehydrator, or use a needle and thread to string the small morel caps like beads, then hang them to dry. Or set them outside in the sun on a plastic screen for a day or two – until they’re brittle. Beware of squirrels, though, they love mushrooms.

HOW DO YOU CLEAN THEM?

Wild mushrooms often show up with bits of dirt and debris stuck to them, and morels are especially tricky because of the honeycomb cap. The best way to clean them is to brush them with a soft brush or toss them in a colander to shake off any debris. Use water on mushrooms only as a last resort – if you must, put them into a colander and rinse them very quickly under a blast of running water, then spin them dry in a salad spinner or pat them between layers of paper towels to remove excess water, then cook them right away. Mushrooms are like strawberries – once you get them wet, they spoil.

HOW CAN YOU COOK MORELS?

My favourite way to cook any mushroom is simply sautéed in butter with a little fresh minced garlic and maybe a splash of cream or brandy. Use high heat – you want them to sear and brown nicely with the garlic, then finish with a bit of brandy and touch of cream. Then you can serve them on toast as an appetizer or dumped over a grilled steak.

But morel mushrooms take to all kinds of preparations. They have a nice firm texture and a earthy, meaty flavour.  They’re great with eggs – for fillings for crepes or omelets or in frittatas – in soup or risotto, in creamy pasta sauces, or sauces for chicken or turkey cutlets, even stuffed with bread stuffing with sausage or bacon, or polenta with cheese. You can even drizzle larger specimens with olive oil, infused with garlic, and grill them.

Of course, other spring foods seem to match perfectly with morels – asparagus, lamb, sautéed with fresh spring greens like spinach and nettles. And they make great finger food- dipped in beaten eggs and cracker crumbs and pan fried, or stuffed and baked for about 20 minutes in a hot oven.

Just don’t eat them raw – they will make you sick.

RECIPES: I always like mushrooms in creamy soups – so here are a couple of choices.

click here for morel mushroom recipes....

©Cinda Chavich 2007

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