Happy February, food & foraging friends!

Is it spring yet?

Patience is not my strong suit, so the stretch between fall hens and spring morels can seem unendurable indeed. Having culinary experiments makes the time go a little faster, though, and this winter I’m all about fermenting. (For a little primer on fermentation, check out my February Natural Awakenings column.)

Fermentation can be a great way to incorporate wild ingredients preserved throughout the year. So far this winter I’ve made a lemon mugwort beer, a juniper-spruce brew, a pine soda, and a hawthorn berry wine – all with foraged ingredients either found in winter or easily preserved in earlier months. (Fun fact about mugwort: before hops, it was one of the primary bittering agents in beer, called gruit – learn more about these old school herbaceous brews here.)

Left/top: Hawthorn berry wine at different stages, and a few wild fermented brews from foraged ingredients, no commercial yeast added. Right/bottom: Old Man of the Woods is an ugly smelly old bastard, tamed only through dehydrating for broth in the author’s humble opinion.

Frankly I’ve been kicking myself for not preserving more of my 2021 finds, but I have made the most of the few ingredients I did, including rose petals and lavender blossoms from my community garden and two very meh mushrooms, the chicken fat suillus and a character called Old Man of the Woods. The easy part first: the rose and lavender have made lovely additions to hot chocolate and home brewed kombucha, another easy fermentation project (hit me up if you want a free SCOBY!)

So, back to Old Man of the Woods, Strobilomyces strobilaceus or Strobilomyces floccopus. With the Old Man’s dark scaly cap, he’s one of the easiest boletes to identify. The first time I found him, I cooked him up in a simple sauté, what I always do with a new edible mushroom. It was disgusting: a smelly black goo that I couldn’t bring myself to choke down, and I’m that person who’ll eat just about anything.

Fast forward to this past summer. I’d since heard that the Old Men could be good once dehydrated, and having found a slew of them, thought I would give it a shot. Dehydrated, their odor — something like cat pee left to settle into fabric — concentrated. Undeterred (okay, a little deterred), I decided to try to blitz a few in the food processor and steep them in hot water for a simple broth. Fungal alchemy, friends! It mellowed into a pleasant broth with a beautiful rich, dark color that I’ve since been using as stock for soups and risottos.

Old Man of the Woods will never be my favorite mushroom, but it’s not a bad thing to have in the dead of winter when the cupboards are bare.

Have I persuaded you to become a member of the Mycological Association of Washington yet, where you will learn alll the things about alll the mushrooms? I joined MAW’s board this year as culinary chair, and excited to have a bunch of fun events lined up this coming March, including a cooking demo by Chad Hyatt chef and author of The Mushroom Hunter’s Kitchen and a oyster mushroom cultivation workshop hosted at ANXO. Neither of these have been publicly announced yet, so you heard it here first!

Wildly yours,

April

PS – check out past newsletters here!