Two guests at our dinner party — a Brit and a Yank — had declarations to make as they sit around down . “ I have an irrational fear of mushroom , ” said one . “ Me too , ” said the other .
“ Thank goodness I like a challenge , ” said I.
One of my tricks for converting mycophobes is to attend to several types of mushrooms in separate bowls . But each one is make the same means with butter , garlic and parsley and served as a mini buffet . Few masses can resist the temptation to equate and counterpoint bite - size pieces of food between course .
Hedgehog Mushrooms
My married woman and I were volunteering on a small organic farm in Italy ’s southerly Tuscany region . Luisa , the farmer , did n’t trust in letting oeuvre get in the way of having a ripe prison term .
While drinking bottles of local wine-colored over dinner and follow the rest of us — two more Yanks , a Spaniard and three Italians — howl with pleasure while forking up glistening bits of the mushrooms I ’d make , our Anglophonic mycophobes start step on it to exhaust their share . At the death of the repast , the Brit asked , “ Are there any more of the hedgehogs left ? ”
The hedgehog in question was one of the half - twelve multifariousness of comestible mushrooms we ’d harvested the day before with the help of Severino , the local one - eyed forager .
Hedgehogs ( Hydnum repandum ) have a sweet-smelling , slightly loopy taste . Their texture is denser than most mushrooms . Noted forager and chef Alan Bergo has pot of recipe for this delicious mushroomon his website .
Read more : Get urge to engross with wild mushrooms !
Easy to Learn
Hedgehog mushrooms are also easy for novices to learn . There are no poisonous look - alikes for Erinaceus europeaeus . ( You might want to take a nibble to make certain you ’re not reap a like species with a slightly bitter taste and drab ceiling and spines , though . )
If you ’re in doubt , edible hedgehog mushroom have a white spore semblance . But that ’s not really weigh necessary for field identification .
Hedgehog mushrooms have a raw sienna - colored cap that has a similar color range to chanterelle , to which they ’re related . The hood will be the size of your decoration or smaller . It will have a smooth or sometimes suede - like top control surface .
Its nearly white husk — inside and out — will be no longer or wide than your pollex . The underside of the detonating equipment will also be snowy . The mushroom will lightly stain orange or chocolate-brown where touched .
The clincher is that the underside will be altogether wrap up by diminutive teeth that are pale in color than the top of the jacket and about 1⁄4 column inch long . Just the veracious length for a fairy to use it as a hairbrush .
Some mean the spikes resemble the fur on porcupine , hence the rough-cut name . Hedgehogs also go by the name “ dentini ” in Italy because the spikes resemble tiny tooth .
you may see hedgehog throughout North America . forager in the Rockies may find them in fall . In areas with mild seasons , such as the West Coast , they run through crepuscle and winter . East of the Rockies , they start fruiting in late summer and can keep show up into other wintertime .
Even in the frosty Northeast , foragers may come up them in December .
Read more : Make your own DIY chantrelle picker with these wanton instruction .
The Marrying Kind
They belong to to a mathematical group of mushroom that I call “ the marrying kind , ” as they imprint collaborative relationships with the roots of conifers and deciduous tree . They might be found in almost any variety of forest .
Severino had help us find ours in a forest of mature beech tree with moss - cover up boulders as big as a sign . He had been foraging there to put nutrient on his kinsfolk ’s table since boyhood . In his hard - to - understand Tuscan dialect , he manoeuvre out places where he had camp down in some of the hollow in the boulder while gain mushroom cloud soup over a fire .
When we differentiate him that some people from English - speaking area had a care of mushroom , he found the construct laughable .
If you do any international travel , you ’ll find the same odd phenomenon . Only hoi polloi in English - speaking countries — U.S. , Canada , U.K. , New Zealand , Australia — harbor fears about mushrooms .
I ’ll shed more light on that in a succeeding chromatography column .
This article earlier seem in the January / February 2021 issue ofHobby Farmsmagazine .
