Why we should all be more inventive with mushrooms
Mushrooms are so rarely the star – unless you’re vegetarian and faced, yet again, with mushroom risotto as your only option on a restaurant menu.
However, chef Glynn Purnell is hoping to elevate the mushroom’s humble profile to luxurious ingredient, having teamed up with Krug Champagne on From Forest To Fork, an expert mushroom and champagne pairing guide.
Wellies on, handwarmers cracked and stuffed in our pockets, I’m spending the day with Glynn and expert fungi forager James Wood (Totally Wild UK), venturing out into Lickey Hills Country Park, Birmingham, with two wicker baskets in tow: one for edibles, the other for non-edible, but still interesting, specimens.
“Only four or five species of mushrooms are commercially grown in the UK,” explains James, alluding to supermarket favourites like button, portobello and chestnut varieties, “but our woodlands are full of mushrooms we can pick and eat.”
“There’s a fear thing around mushrooms,” James notes – but you can see why, he acknowledges, when mushrooms have different levels of toxicity, with some even proving fatal if eaten.
We keep walking, nibbling on jelly ears found in the crevice of an elder branch (they look how they sound and can be used to thicken stews), and gnawing on turkey tails, which are frilly and fanned like scallop shells or, well, turkey tails – they don’t break down, so are essentially a woodland substitute for chewing gum, except also full of immuneboosting nutrients.
We uncover oyster mushrooms with gills, glistening ink caps that stain your fingers jet black, and a broad flat conk that’s white and spongy - you can draw on its surface with a twig, or, if you’re very enterprising, conks can be used to brew beer and coffee.
Our forest lunch is a rustic version of a dish he created to pair with Krug in his restaurant, made up of Montgomery cheddar, delicate mushrooms, hints of Marmite and slivers of gold leaf. We eat the finished article (wittily named, ‘It’s a bit tight in here. There’s not mushroom’) with glasses of Krug’s Grand Cuvee, at a dining table strung with mushrooms and moss suspended in miniature terrariums.
“The champagne tastes better in the woods – but this’ll do, right?” says Glynn with a grin. He’s not wrong.