Most of you probably don't know this about me, but finding mushrooms in the wild and eating them (without dying) is on my bucket list. I mean, it’s not number one on my list, but it is on there. So when Angela (our wwoofing host) suggested that we could go on a mushroom hunt with real live experts, I said, “yes” enthusiastically.
Since landing at The Food Farm, we've been introduced to porcini mushrooms, or for those of you that don't speak Italy, but speak England - Penny Buns. These fungi are so rare and sought after that they run about $60 a pound here in NZ, which my friend Google tells me is comparable to the price of the most expensive cheeses on the south island. Not surprising that Angela has been pretty hush hush about the secret locations of these shrooms.
Last night after supper, Angela invited us to go on a mushrooms hunt, so long as location identification was turned off on our phones and we swore that we wouldn't reveal porcini locations to ANYONE. So we signed the waiver, handed over rights to the first born (sorry Abigail), and excitedly agreed to the 7am departure time.
This experience did NOT disappoint. After leaving The Food Farm and picking up Angela's chef friend Kate, we drove an undisclosed distance, in a random direction, spun around 3 times and stopped in an oak forest somewhere on the south island. You are probably asking yourself why an oak forest (and if you weren't, bet you are now!) As the archives reveal, British settlers brought oak trees to New Zealand in the 1800's, and low and behold some porcini spores were along for the ride. So that's why in some places (sorry we cannot be more specific), when you have a stand of oak trees, you maybe lucky enough to find porcini mushrooms.
Enough history and sciency talk, let's get back to the story. Out of the car we jumped, and literally in about 3 minutes into our foraging walk, Paul located the first golden brown gem. Not a dog turd, a porcini mushroom, silly!
With knives in hand, the four mighty mushroom hunters spread out and scoured the area. It was tough going. Porcini are evasive - with their brown tops they blend into their surroundings. But after about 45 minutes we were honing in on some signs - maybe grass, maybe leaf litter, a bit of sun, maybe damp soil, perhaps other mushrooms in the vicinity. As you can see we had narrowed this down to a real science!
 |
| We also found many other cool-looking mushrooms |
You'll be happy to hear that after a peaceful two hour walk in the woods, we reconvened and counted our collection. We'd hauled in about 25 porcini mushrooms!!! Guess we can know add "Porcini Forager" to our resumes.
On the way home, we stopped at a few other locations to pickup seaweed for the compost, a few blackberries and some wild kawakawa fruits (that taste like pepper!)
Angela and Kate were generous and patient as they taught us so much about foraging for food.