High Season for Mushrooms

We’ve been enjoying a lot of mushrooms of late.  There have been two Alberta Mycological Society events in the past month that have had us eating and contemplating mushrooms non-stop.

First was the AMS Expo, the City of Champignons at the Devonian Botanical Gardens.  Chad and Thea dreamed up a fantastic soup and mushroom tasting plate that Lisa and I helped them cook and serve.

Then on the Labour Day weekend we headed out to Hinton for the AMS Great Alberta Foray.  Above left are some of the edible vareties found that weekend.

Thank you to the AMS for enriching our culinary life and letting us explore the Alberta countryside, turning over logs and hopping over streams in pursuit of fungi.  And thank you to Chad and Thea for getting us involved in that organization in the first place.

I’ll leave you with a couple of the mushroom plates I cooked this month.

Mo-Na Foods, an Edmonton distributor specializing in foraged food, recently brought in some enormous morels from the Yukon.  Here they are stuffed with rabbit mousseline and served with carrot purée:

Hedgehog mushrooms look similar to chantrelles, only they have teeth under the cap instead of ridges. Most mushroomers agree that hedgehogs are tastier than their more-famous cousins.  After a quick sautée Lisa and I ate some on grilled flatbread with goat cheese and charred green onion.