The Mushroom Hunters by Langdon Cook

Author:Langdon Cook
Language: eng
Format: mobi, epub
ISBN: 9780345536266
Publisher: Random House Publishing Group
Published: 2013-09-09T21:00:00+00:00

CHAPTER 8

The Discreet Charm of the Golden Chanterelle

IF THE HEDGEHOG IS THE UNDERDOG of wild mushrooms, the matsutake an exotic foreigner, and the king bolete royalty, the chanterelle is a preening starlet on the red carpet, hoping—praying—for one more People cover. Despite its romantic twirl off the tongue, you’d think the chanterelle was practically domesticated—an off-the-shelf French floozy Halloween costume. Is there an A-list wild mushroom that gets less respect among the mycoscenti, after all, than the chanty? Like an overexposed model, it has the faint whiff of “been there, done that” among connoisseurs. Well, I for one wouldn’t kick a golden chanterelle out of the kitchen for getting around, and apparently I’m not alone.

More than any other fungi, including even morels, the chanterelle is the wild mushroom most likely encountered by the average restaurant patron. This is in part because of its abundance the world over—and its cheapness. Known as girolle in France and pfifferling in Germany, with its signature egg-yolk color and fluted shape—a golden goblet of the woods—the chanterelle cuts a striking figure on the plate, even if it sometimes gets bloated and soggy after heavy rains. It has a slightly fruity aroma and a flavor that is reminiscent, some will tell you, of apricots. Chefs love it for that warm color and singular taste. Combined with a salty cut of pig, it’s irresistible.

The temperate forests of the world are flush with chanterelles. They fruit on every continent except Antarctica. Recent estimates of global chanterelle commerce put the total annual crop at more than 400 million pounds, worth $1.25 to $1.4 billion. Their many common names are an indication of their ubiquity. The Japanese call them an-zutake (apricot mushroom); the Portuguese canarinhos (canary bird chicken); crête de coq (cock’s crest) is just one of many French common names; Hungarian is csirke gomba (chicken mushroom); Dutch dooierzwam (egg yolk mushroom); Chinese jiyou-jun (chicken fat mushroom); Turkish yumurta mantasi; Icelandic kantarella; Swahili wisogolo. They’re mentioned in literature as early as 1581 by Dutch herbalist Lobelius. Linnaeus chose the name Agaricus chantarellus for the common European golden chanterelle in 1747, and Elias Magnus Fries, the Swedish father of mycology, updated it to Cantharellus cibarius in his Systema Mycologicum, published in three volumes between 1821 and 1832; that name persists today in both the Old World and the New. The Greek kantharos means cup or goblet; cibarius is Latin for food. The family Cantharellaceae contains more than ninety species and, at last count, five genera, including the closely related Cantharellus and Craterellus, which, between them, account for many edible species harvested on the mushroom trail, all of them distinguished by their goblet-like form and hint of stone-fruit aroma.

Picking chanterelles in coastal Washington and Oregon is nearly a cliché. Doug apologized at the outset for what he figured would be a boring day—the closest thing there is to industrial mushroom picking. And he was right: Chanterelles are a bread-and-butter pick for harvesters. The money only gets good with volume, meaning a long, repetitive day of “grinding it out.

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