| Archive for Downsizer For an ethical approach to consumption |
| PeteS |
Wild Mushrooms at Tesco'sOn Sunday, after going out to walk the dog, take a picture of that Chicken of the Woods, do various chores etc. I stopped off at Tesco's to use their bottle bank. Now, I hate Tesco's but I had a load of bottles and using any other bottle bank would take me way out of my way. On the way out I spotted some mushrooms on the exit roundabout, but it was pouring with rain and it was not an easy place to stop. Today I went past Tesco's and thought I'd take a look. The roundabout had a few pine trees and in amongst these were loads of Slippery Jacks. Now, I often leave these mushrooms as they are not the best, but it's the end of the season and I could not resist, so I picked the better ones - almost 1kg worth! I also had a general look around and found an old well past-it Cep! Now, this is a place where 100's of people pass by everyday and in town too. I must have looked a bit odd to the people leaving the store with boot fulls of ready meals. |
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| Fee |
I believe Tesco sell boxes of 'Wild British Mushrooms' too, or at least they did last year 
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| vegplot |
Wild as is nature or wild as in commercially grown wild varieties? | ||||||
| Fee |
No idea I'm afraid...and I'm not registering on Tesco.com to find out 
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| vegplot |
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| Treacodactyl |
Many shops sell wild mushrooms, as in collected from the wild, often the Eastern European countries. It does puzzle me why things like Chanterelles are imported when there seems to be plenty here, they often seem to cost £3-£4 for a small tray. | ||||||
| PeteS |
It's illegal to sell English wild mushrooms. It is legal to sell them from Scotland, but the scottish ones are very expensive. It's cheaper to get them from Eastern Europe! Most British 'wild' mushrooms sold in supremarkets are not wild at all. They are often cultivated version of mushrooms found in the wild, eg Oyster mushrooms. |
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| Treacodactyl |
Really? Even if they are from your own land? What about the people who sell pick them from the wild in England and sell them openly to restaurants? I'm not disagreeing, just don't think I've heard that before. |
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| PeteS |
Yes, if you own the land then it is legal. People that pick then from places like the New Forest and sell them openly to restaurants, then yes, it's illegal. Ever hear about the case of Mrs Tee: http://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/this-britain/mushroom-picker-returns-to-hunting-ground-425755.html |
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| Rob R |
This is all I could find in the mushroom camp: Igda Dried Wild Porcini Mushrooms 25g £1.59(£63.60/kg) 
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| Silas |
She seems like a proper loony to me. | ||||||
| Silas |
They usually have a fair selection on the fresh counter. |
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| Treacodactyl |
Wouldn't it also be legal if you gained permission from the land owner? |
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| Rob R |
Any idea what types? |
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| PeteS |
The only supermarket that I have seen that sells real wild mushrooms is Waitrose, and these come from places like Eastern Europe. Supremarkets like Tesco's only have cultivated 'wild' mushrooms. At least that is my experience of supermarkets down here. |
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| Silas |
Not really - brownish ones usually. I don't generally buy anything but 'normal' mushrooms on the basis that if the others were really any good, they would be just as popular. I have yet to taste a 'wild' mushroom that came close to a proper field mushroom. Chanterelles taste like milk soaked in bread and most of the others have flavours so mild thay are hardly worth the bother of cooking. te exception is possibly shitake mushrooms and even then they only seem to have any flavour if they are dried. |
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| PeteS |
Yes, that would be legal. However, in reality it's difficult (in England) to own enough land to make it pay. |
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| PeteS |
Errr.. they are in most countries, e.g. France. It's just the Brits that are odd. I find that cultivated mushrooms taste like eating cardboard, but everyone is different. |
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| PeteS |
PS - shitakii are cultivated, not wild. | ||||||
| Silas |
You cite France and then say the British are a bit odd?? We, at least, don't have frogs legs as a national dish, we dont force feed geese for fat livers - blimey, the only people with a more depraved diet than the french are the bl**dy chinese! |
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| Silas |
I bet they are wild as well. |
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| PeteS |
Yeah, the Brits have a great diet. Most live on ready meals and have one of the highest rates of obestity in the world. Wild mushrooms are expensive because the majority want them, i.e. they are considered worth the extra money. Otherwise people would not pay for them. If you want cheap stuff then fine, but you get what you pay for. All the Shitaki we get here are cultivated. |
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| tahir |
In the UK? |
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| Silas |
The majority DON'T want them. I tend to pick wild field mushrooms when they are about, but otherwise I will buy them. I tried a growing kit once but zilch! Not one! Don't knock British food, there is some great stuff out there. |
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| Silas |
Dunno, know very little about fungi as it happens. |
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| PeteS |
I am not knocking British food. The majority shop in Tesco's. The majority want Tesco's food. Yeah, I agree Tesco's food is quality British. |
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| Stewy |
Yeah, I bought some winter chanterelles from Waitrose a few years ago, not that you would have to buy any though eh Pete!! |
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| Silas |
That is a massive generalisation that is simply not even worthy of a response. |
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| cab |
Gosh... You're cooking them wrong. The reason why more species of mushroom aren't popular is because they cannot be farmed commercially, as even if you CAN grow 'em you don't get sufficient yields to make them pay. Thats why the wild species, when they are actually sold, are so monstrously expensive, its because they're wild and it is expensive to pick 'em. So they can't be as 'popular', because they're not available in the same bulk at the same price. |
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| cab |
Not native here they aren't, in fact I can't immediately think of any shroom of that genus native to Europe. Farmed in massive quantity, though. |
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| Silas |
Well I bow to your superior knowledge on this one. I realise that you are a bit of a fungi, I love field mushrooms, but have yet to be impressed with the flavour of other sorts. My terminology may be a bit suspect here, I refer to anything but what I call field mushrooms as wild mushrooms. Now, I can get button 'fleld mushrooms', flat 'field mushrooms' horse 'field mushrooms' - I am sure you can see where I am coming from.... I do sometimes but dried 'wild' mushrooms and sprinkle them into casseroles etc, but even in France, I have failed to be impressed with them. |
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| PeteS |
I saw those last year. They were from some Eastern European country. The ones I saw looked past it and if any of my mushrooms looked like that they would have gone in the bin. |
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| PeteS |
All wild mushrooms have a very short shelf life - from a day to a week at the most. Which is why they are so hard for large shops to deal with and why, when you buy them or even have them in a restaurant, they are never as nice as when picked and eaten on the day. | ||||||
| Silas |
Its OK for you guys who know what you are doing - I think most of us would end up in hospital if we tried it. |
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| Rob R |
The majority haven't tried them because they are not readily available, it's not the same as them not being wanted. They're a bit like fillet steak, ie expensive because you can't produce them in any quantity, and most people don't get the chance to know wether they like them or not, they just don't bother finding out. Come to think of it, I don't ever remember cooking or trying fillet, I must do that.
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| Silas |
Well I think the fillet steak is a good analogy, also expensive and pretty tasteless. |
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| Rob R |
So people tell me.
I've always found the flavour of wild mushrooms to be quite strong & the ones from the mushroom farm to be quite bland. I guess freshness plays a big part, though mainly to texture, rather than taste, in my experience (which isn't very broad). |
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| PeteS |
You pick field mushrooms, which is great, although I tend to avoid these. Not because I don't like them, but because there are not that many around my way and bacause of possible confusion with the Yellow Stainer. It's sort of what you know. |
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| PeteS |
All fillet steak is not the same. Poor quality fillet steak does not have much taste, but the good stuff is great. Top-quality, aged, grain-fed scotch fillet is fantastic. |
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| PeteS |
In general they do have a stronger taste, but the range is wide. Some (like the Brown Birch Bolete) don't have that much taste, while others (like the Cep) a very strong flavour. If there is a wild version of a cultivated variety it's taste is always stronger. The Oyster mushroom is a good example - it's taste is much stronger when wild. Taste does change as they age. It also depends how you cook them. It's quite possible to ruin a dish by, for example, stewing a mushroom that needs to be cooked quickly and on a high heat. |
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| vegplot |
Have you tried ceps? I find their flavour far outweighs almost anything else in the mushroom world that I've tasted. |
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| Truffle |
Yep- wild mushrooms vary enormously in flavor, and some can be very strong indeed. In fact some, such as smaller puff-balls and st-Georges can be too rich for some tastes. Penny-buns are definitely packed full of flavor, especially when dried (horns are also amazing dried) and others such as blewitts have a strong taste. I think some people can be put off by, for example, chanterelles- which vary massively from deliciously fruity and well textured, to watery and bland (depending on where they are picked and the host tree or local strain- its a very complex group of species). Never got on with oysters, not that great (cultivated or wild) but they do pickle well... Just had to add support as I'm also a massive mycophile 
Truffle ps 80% of all truffles are cultivated and there's no difference in flavor! |
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| PeteS |
I totally agree, but then some people's favorite "beer" is Stella. Everyone is different. |
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| tahir |
Well, you would say that wouldn't you?
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| Rob R |
That can't be right
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| Truffle |
had to drop it in 
there was a taste test several years ago by french skeptics where they pitched cultivated Australian truffles vs french truffles. The verdict? no one could tell the difference 
Truffle |
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| tahir |
Are you a fungi magnate yet? | ||||||
| PeteS |
I find Oyster mushrooms make a great duxelle. Truffles are a bit different as the way they are cultivated is close to wild. People that cultivate mushrooms like shittaki will use the same log over and over again. They are forced too, which I think makes a difference. |
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| Truffle |
more so a fungi magnet...
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| vegplot |
But they've never induced one to beat one's wife. |
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| tahir |
I'm sure plenty of people (not Silas, obviously) would love to be one too. |
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| tahir |
What do you mean? It's only inoculated once, and when it stops fruiting then that's basically it, isn't it? |
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| PeteS |
I can see this, although I bet that the people that hunt wild truffles in France and Italy are not worried about their jobs. Well, not for a while. |
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| Jonnyboy |
My favourite are parasols, especially when dried and used in a risotto. I think it's because I find the rich taste evocative of how mushrooms tasted to me as a child. | ||||||
| Truffle |
I guess 'forced' is the key. Interestingly, penny buns can also be cultivated, although its a long and unreliable process. As can morels, by quite heroic and expensive processes to realize it on a commercial scale (far too expensive). Chanterelles can also be grown but so little is known that inoculated trees have only fruited a couple of times and in very small quantities. All completely differnt to growing oysters/shitake etc - which are easy/cheap and reliable to grow |
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| tahir |
Won't be long till the evil Dr Truffle drives em all out of business
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| tahir |
Did you ever speak to that fella in Colchester I told you about? |
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| PeteS |
I thought (well I am sure I read somewhere) that the logs are inoculated more than once. Why waste a good log  Maybe Truffle can tell us?
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| Silas |
Hoi! You may have me well wrong here. I could well be suffering from a surfeit of ignorance. After reading posts by pete and cab it looks like i could well be missing out on something. The trouble is, just how do i get fresh fungus without the knowledge of what i am picking? I don't know a 'cep' (?) from a 'devils stinkhorn ramscup deciever', so I can't see how i can enjoy the experience without actually killing myself. |
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| Truffle |
Exactly, its often quoted at conferences that the amount of truffle orchards being planted every year is only just enough to off-set natural decline in truffle plantations and wild harvests truffle |
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| tahir |
What I've read, and seen (at ART, far from commercial scale) is inoculated once and discarded when it ceases to be viable. |
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| tahir |
Loads of organised mushrooming events up and down the country |
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| Truffle |
I think they can sleep soundly... the markets plenty big enough. Who was the chap in Colchester again? |
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| tahir |
The guy who said he could cultivate 60+ species |
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| Truffle |
The same log can have many fruiting cycles- not sure what happens in a commercial sense though- also there's also huge use of 'fake logs'- compressed material etc. I don't know too much about these types of fungi as I'm mainly a mycorrhizal obsessive
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| tahir |
www.mushroomtable.com | ||||||
| Truffle |
sound implausible, but I don't know why I cant remember this  could you please resend the details? Many thanks
edit- got it, cheers- will have a look now edit2- nice website, cant see the ref or list of 60+ but he does a good range. Nice site |
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| jamanda |
Get a book, like Rodger Phillips - borrow it from the library if you don't want to splash out. Go for a wander and see what you can find. Take photos, following the instructions in Cab's sticky at the top of this section, also using the edible fungi gallery as a reference. Do spore prints, get familiar with what is in your area. Post the pictures on here to get confirmation of what you have discovered for your self. if you don't have the self confidence for that (you don't strike me a person lacking in that though) then as Tahir suggests, there are loads of of organised fungal forays about. |
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| tahir |
I had a fair (phone) chat with him, really a mushroom geek (maybe even more so than you), he says he raise only a few at a time but has the capability to do loads more. I'm sure he said 60, could be wrong though. Ring him up, I'm sure you'll get on. |
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| Rob R |
 Just remembered, you could also get a DVD too. It's probably available in Tesco too.
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| Truffle |
Sounds great, specialist in decomposing fungi- would be interesting to chat, I'll drop him a line... |
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| tahir |
That's why I said ring him, didn't strike me as someone who responds well to emails. |
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| tahir |
In fact I think you did email him last time, you CCd me in on it. |
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| Truffle |
Yep- rings a bell now, I've just sent another lengthy e-mail will call tomorrow...
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