Shooting Times & Country Magazine
Strange fruit
John Wright breaks down bracket fungi from the distasteful to the downright delicious
Having covered the topic of oyster mushrooms in my previous missive, (Foraging, 20 July), bracket fungi seemed an obvious sequel. For the sake of this article, I define ‘bracket’ fungi as being any fungal fruiting body that grows on trees and that is not any sort of mushroom. Diminishingly few of these are edible, but as far as I know, none are seriously poisonous. You are likely to be safe, apart from eating something that is unpleasant in flavour, or so tough that you would fare better eating the tree on which it grows. I will start with a fungus that is barely edible and work up to the best.
The dryad’s saddle, Polyporus squamosus, is a magnificent and very common bracket that grows on a number of broadleaved trees, though I almost invariably find it on ash. The large, foxy/speckled brackets with many thousands of cream-coloured pores on the underside are inedible, but anyone of a robust disposition should be able to manage the near-spherical young specimens. They can, at least, be chewed and have a strong flavour of raw pastry. I realise that I am not exactly selling this one, so on to one that at least some people like, the beefsteak fungus, Fistulina hepatica.
Medium-rare?
This is a liver-coloured and rubbery bracket on oak trees and, rarely, sweet chestnut. The underside is a mass of pale, tiny and densely packed tubes. When cut, it will ‘bleed’ and reveal flesh that looks like a piece of fatty steak. So far, so good.
Unfortunately, even when lovingly cooked, the flavour falls nowhere near this early promise, tasting of unripe tomatoes. But, as I say, some people like it, and maybe you will too. It does have one advantage in that it enhances the flavour of other foods. A few slices in a stew or game pie will dissolve, leaving you with a tastier dish. Having spent 30 years behind the bench as a furniture-maker, I love the beefsteak fungus for another reason — it turns the oak timber in which it grows a rich brown. The resulting timber is called ‘brown oak’ and is extremely attractive.
has a relative in the giant polypore, Meripilus giganteus. These form huge individual bracket-like fronds that bruise distinctly grey. It is only slightly edible in that it is tough and acidic.
The cauli and the king
Pine trees also produce bracket fungi, the most edible of which is the cauliflower fungus, Sparassis crispa.
I see these two or three times a year, and a walk through a pine forest during late August through to early November will have me scanning the base of trees for them. They are conspicuous, rounded masses and can be enormous. My biggest find was more than half the size of my mushroom basket. Their similarity to cauliflower is superficial, consisting of a central mass from which ochre to cream-coloured, branching, flat and twisted fronds appear.
Top:
Above:
The cauliflower fungus is common enough, but it does have some relatives that should be avoided because of their rarity. The flavour is nutty/mushroomy and very pleasant, and it too can be dried and powdered for later culinary use. If there is a problem with this fungus, it is the amount of cleaning it requires.
Every nook and cranny will be packed with compost, needles and earwigs — you just have to work at it. I have noticed an unspoken tradition associated with the collection of this fungus: foragers will take only a third of any one specimen, with future collectors taking a third of whatever is left. Theoretically, this would allow an infinite number of collections.
The king of bracket fungi is the aforementioned chicken of the woods, Laetiporus sulphureum.
It forms irregular, rounded tiers on several trees, and is a brilliant yellow when fresh. Its flavour is of mushrooms, its texture of chicken. The largest I ever saw went 7ft up an oak and was 18in wide and 8in
Top:
Above: deep in places. There is no excuse for getting this one wrong — the bright colour alone is distinctive. It is bad form to remove an entire specimen, so I content myself with slicing a little from two or three leading edges where the flesh is the most succulent.
All of the above are common, but there is a group of edible brackets
“Diminishingly few are edible, but as far as I know, none are seriously poisonous”
that should never be collected — the Hericium or ‘tooth’ species. There are three of these, of which I have seen only two — the tiered tooth,
H cirrhatum, and the bearded tooth, H erinaceus. All are simply spectacular in appearance, masses of long, fine teeth hanging down from a variety of bracket structures.
They are still collected by the ignorant and (frankly) stupid, but are far too glorious to even touch.
The last of these, however, is commonly cultivated for food under the name ‘lion’s mane fungus’. This is a very noble enterprise, but one that has always seemed odd to me, being akin to farming pandas. Panda burgers, anyone?
involved in accidents than for those shot during a hunt. Worryingly, the population of roe deer has more than halved in a few years.
There are still some places that offer enough game to support hunting in a big way, but it remains important to safeguard the wildlife in the area and juggle the needs of all interested parties — hunters, farmers and local authorities — to ensure good relations are maintained.
Interlopers
Added to this is the growing incursion of wild boar that are slowly roaming from east to west, spreading out from the Ardennes and into the Walloon fields and forests. The government has mandated that these interlopers must be combatted aggressively by hunters, according to strict rules, if other preventative action fails.
Taken together, it all adds up to a significant change in the dog world. With less small game and more boar, many hunters now want to buy a suitable ‘tracking dog’, but here’s where the problem starts. It’s easy to label any mutt as a tracking dog, but it’s not possible to do this work with any old animal.