Happy September, food & foraging friends!
And just like that, pawpaws, pumpkins and persimmons are back in, compliments of the season!
The highlight of this month for me was getting to convene with my fellow mycophiles at “mushroom camp”: Sequanota, MAW’s annual convening in Jennerstown, PA.
Being still limited in my walking range I had to forego the forays, but as the club’s Culinary Chair, I got to sit on my kitchen throne and let the masses bring pounds upon pounds of black trumpets, chicken of the woods, chanterelles and even a little early hen to my feet. I collaborated with the kitchen staff to throw wild mushrooms into every meal, including a buffalo style chicken of the woods pizza, french toast with chanterelle syrup, black trumpet butter and more.
The weekend was packed with learning opportunities, including a microscopy workshop, a mushroom textile dyeing demo and presentations from guest mycologists with the New York Mycological Society.
Easily overwhelmed, I always like to focus on one new thing, and this time, it was learning more about the wild life that are lichen. We are blessed with a few professional lichenologists in our club, who led a cemetery walk (tombstones of the long gone being ideal habitat for the long-lived life forms) and nighttime bioluminescent lichen peeping.
You thought fungi were fun, just look what happens when they get together with algae! Indeed, here are some fun facts: Lichens straddle kingdoms, being symbiotic pairing of fungi and algae. Lichens can survive extreme conditions (even Antarctica and space), and can live to be thousands of years old. However they only grow millimeters a year and many are also extremely sensitive to air quality (the presence of certain lichen in cities can be a harbinger of improved pollution control). They can lie dormant for years and then jump back into action photosynthesizing in minutes, just add water.
I already had been hipped to the edibility of lichen from my favorite survival reality show, Alone. (Haven’t seen it? Season seven is THE BEST!) Yet I’d not yet foraged or feasted on this until Sequanota, where I was introduced to three edible species I took home from the specimen table to experiment with.
Left/top: The bounty of the Pennsylvania woods included many delectable edibles among the 200+ species found and identified during MAW Sequanota. Right/bottom: Lichen, including rock tripe, reindeer moss and black rock flower can add interesting textures to your culinary adventures.
“Watch out for that one, it’ll clean you out,” warned one lichen aficionado, referring to the stiff black strip of rock tripe (Umbilicaria mammulata) I was stuffng in my bag. Reportedly George Washington’s troops filled their bellies with this lichen during the lean season at Valley Forge, and they did win the Revolutionary War, so I felt ok about giving it a go.
While regularly consumed in some cultures, lichens are generally considered survival food, perhaps a misnomer because man could certainly not live on lichen alone. Unlike so many other wild foods, lichens have very little nutritive value. Lichens can also be quite tough on the tummy unless properly prepared, given their very high acid content for one. That means a long boil with a few changes of water, ideally some baking soda to help neutralize the acid. I was pleasantly surprised to find that the rock tripe boiled down into a noodle like texture that worked well in a sweet and sour soup, and more importantly, went down easy!
I’d also pulled a little crusty lichen blossom from a stick that had been identified for me as black stone flower (Parmotrema perlatum). Search for that on Google and shopping results will come up: the lichen is used as a spice in traditional Indian cooking, notably giving biryani its je ne sais quoi tasting notes. This got fried with cumin seeds and other spices to go into the rice, which turned out nicely, but without any noticeable flavor from the lichen.
The final touch: a big poof of lacy reindeer “moss” (Cladonia rangiferina), double boiled, dried and then deep fried as an edible garnish. This imparted little flavor but much fun crunchy texture and eye candy.
The final verdict: I’ll file lichens under “zombie apocalypse emergency rations,” but as always, the kitchen experiment spurred me on to learn more – including my final words of advice. Just like Frank Zappa warned us not to eat the yellow snow, your friendly forager is here to tell you don’t eat the yellow lichen! These often contain poisonous vulpinic acid. The more you know….
Wildly yours,
April