Just above our garden, along the lower side of an old road bed, we oftentimes can find chanterelle mushrooms in late July or early August. On Saturday, as Cathy was weeding the garden, I took off with a plastic bag to see if any mushrooms were growing. Whatever environmental conditions determine successful mushroom growth, they were ideal this year. I filled a plastic grocery bag nearly to overflowing with beautiful wild chanterelle mushrooms. There must have been five pounds. We will cook these in olive oil with salt, pepper, and a bit of thyme, and then vacuum seal and freeze the cooked mushrooms. They are fantastic in risotto and over pasta.
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| 2011 Chanterelle mushroom crop |
In July of 2005, the summer we were building the house, we noted mushrooms all over the property, some that looked exactly like porcini mushrooms, some huge orange mushrooms, and something that clearly looked like chanterelles.
Knowing absolutely nothing about mushrooms and other fungi, we bought a book on
mushrooms of West Virginia, and spent a good part of the weekend identifying different species. We identified more than 25 species, including chanterelles (
Cantharellus cibarius), many blue and green species, the deadly Death Angel mushroom (
Amanita bisporigera), and discovered that what we thought were porcini mushrooms were in fact just that. With one catch. They were a species very closely related to that which grows in Italy. Same size, same shape, same color, but with one key difference: the species was known as the Bitter Boletus. It smelled like a porcini, but tasted like a mixture of a mushroom and a horribly bitter alkaloid. Like chewing an aspirin. Perfectly edible, if you don't mind the taste.
