Mushroom the Journal
Fall 2002
By Harley Barnet

This is somewhat more than a vegetarian cookbook. It is vegan. For the uninitiated, that means no animal products at all no milk, no cheese, no eggs, and no fish, either. Maybe honey, depending upon the depth of your commitment.

It is also a wild vegan cookbook, because modern agriculture and food processors are alleged to have robbed our foods of taste and healthful attributes such as fiber, and because eating animal products is less kind to the planet than subsisting on grains and greens.

For most of us, the vegan lifestyle conjures up bland images of tofu, tempeh, nuts, fruit, cereal grains and strange soups. There are indeed strange soups, and tofu is the main staple in this book, but the recipes are anything but bland. They feature ingredients such as hedge mustard, nettles, anise root, wild ramps, redbud tree blossoms, bayberry, daylily, sumac, huckleberry and elderberry, and 128 recipes for 29 different wild mushrooms. Bland is further discouraged by a strong predilection for pepper and other spices, herbs, wines, and garlic.

Some of those ingredients are strange, and the author might better have added a glossary and list of sources for those who are not familiar with the offerings of natural food stores or who do not have one nearby. Things like kudzu, Bragg's Liquid Amino, and liquid stevia are just not in every cupboard.

Representative creations with wild mushrooms are "Coq au Vin" (with Laetiporus sulfureus), "Chinese Beef and Vegetables" (with Bondarzewia berkeleyi), and "Honey Mushrooms Bourguignonne" (Armillaria mellea).

Vegan cuisine has evolved ways to compensate for the absence of dairy products in menus. Soy milk is course a supermarket staple these days. An egg equivalent is created with ground flax or chia seeds, lecithin granules, and corn or olive oil. Tofu, brewer's yeast, brown rice vinegar, corn oil, lecithin, kosher salt, Tabasco, turmeric, and paprika are compounded to produce "sharp cheese". There are about 45 recipes in the book for vegan "ice cream," which the author touts as "incredibly good" This sort of alchemy leads to long lists of ingredients for many of the recipes, but most of the assembly seems pretty simple. It's just a matter of getting the ingredients all together and perhaps grinding a few seeds or nuts. The ice creams are finished in an electrically driven freezer.

My distant progenitors are said to have been omnivores who would have relished a fat grub, a stolen egg, or a convenient clam. Later ancestors no doubt would have preferred a choice mastodon loin. I try to keep my diet natural by replicating these ancestral menu choices in essence. I will concede, however, that there is some scientific support for the vegetarian lifestyle. Most of us, I think, have cut back on the cholesterol and are mindful of fiber intake. But synthesized eggs?

I picked up a bit of flaxseed and lecithin from our local "Trip to Bountiful" market, added some corn oil, and looked for an egg recipe. The product didn't look like the base for a cheese omelet, so I mixed it into a casserole of summer squash, onion and croutons. The flavor of the ground flax seeds was not all that bad, and there was actually a sort of texture or mouth-feel resembling eggs.

There are other recipes that do look inviting. We have been eating lambs' quarters (Chenopodium or "pig's ears") for many years, so I decided to go out to the garden and collect the basics of a Purslane-Onion Soup. Very good (although I cheated and used 1-percent milk). I found another use for the purslane, too. Our canary is bonkers about it, preferring it even to broccoli.

One note of caution: Wild plants can be just as treacherous as wild mushrooms. As an example, Wild Carrot, one of the featured delicacies in this book, bears an unfortunate resemblance to the deadly Poison Hemlock. This book is sprinkled with caution notes, but an initiate who can't go on one of the author's renowned tours in New York's Central Park should get a good identification guide and study it profoundly before experimenting. The guide is necessary for most folks anyway to learn menu items such as Shepherds Purse, Solomon's Seal, Curly (yellow) dock, Goutweed, Pokeweed, Wild Parsnip and other things stranger.

As it happens, the author has a previous publication titled Identifying and Harvesting Edible and Medicinal Wild (and Not So Wild) Plants. This has a list price of $21.95 but recently has been remaindered by some book sellers. Other publications such as John M. Kingsbury's Deadly Harvest, Oliver Medsger's Edible Wild Plants, and Fernald and Kinsey's Edible Wild Plants of Eastern North America are usually available used. (Check out www.AddALL.com on the Internet.) -H.B.

Like other meadow mushrooms (Agaricus species), this mushroom grows on the ground, where it decomposes organic material; it has gills that are free from the stalk (there's a space between them), and the gills, which are white at first, soon turn brown owing to the brown spores (don't confuse this with potentially deadly Amanitas, which always has white gills). This species has a convex to flat, grayish cap that is 1 to 3 inches across. The stalk is 2 to 3 inches long, 3/8 to 1/2 inch thick, and there's a ring on the upper stalk. The whole mushroom bruises pinkish when injured. You can find forest agaricus mushroom on the ground in moist woods from summer to fall in the East, and from late fall to late winter in California.

The mushroom's deep, smoky flavor makes it ideal for a variety of savory dishes. It cooks in 15 to 20 minutes.

Caution: This mushroom doesn't agree with everyone, so try small amounts the first time.