The Elusive Morel Hides No More

We found some morels!  We finally found some wild morels! Eric, Toby and I went for a hike on Sunday, and Eric spotted one within minutes of getting out of his car: The tiny fleshy fungus rose proudly from a pile of rotting leaves, near the base of a gnarled old Ash tree.

Unlike previous foraging expeditions, we hadn’t gone out specifically to mushroom hunt.  Our intent was to hike.  But when we reached the trail head, Eric noticed all the Ash trees and thought the forest could be productive morel habitat. And it was.  We collected nine morels. I found three or four, and Eric spotted the rest.

The experience of discovering the mysterious little mushrooms was like finding gold. Honest to G-d. That’s the way I described it to Eric at the height of my excitement while we were in the woods.  My analogy is not so far-fetched: Morels are that rare and valuable. One pound of wild morels retails for $40. Our nine blonde morels probably weighed about 12 ounces.  They were nice and plump.

Since morel season is just about over, Eric and I are very excited to have a good spot for shrooming next spring.  We’ll pick a bunch for ourselves and sell the rest.  If you’re interested in buying some morels, place your order now!

Eric and I are hoping we’ll get some rain in the next day or two so that we can go back to our spot and hopefully harvest one last crop.  I *really* want to make a morel and ramp quiche and a morel risotto.

We cooked four of the morels last night in some butter and sherry and ate them with grilled ribeye steaks and garlic toast.  Even though Eric was certain the morels were not the poisonous “false morels” because the mushrooms’ stalks were hollow and the ridges symmetrical, I was still a little nervous about eating them, having never before consumed a mushroom I’d picked in the wild. The mushrooms were delicious, though they tasted faintly of dirt (to me) despite my efforts to clean them thoroughly.  I did not get sick, nor did I have visions of Lucy in the Sky with Diamonds after eating them, for better or for worse.

We’ll eat the rest of the morels this week.

The Elusive Morel: The Search Continues

Eric, Toby and I searched for wild morels yesterday afternoon.  We had gone out about two weeks ago, when we bagged all the ramps, but the ground was too dry to give rise to any morels.  We thought we might have better luck yesterday because it had rained during the week, but when we got into the woods in Manchester, the ground still looked dry, and there was nary a morel in sight.

So we moved on to Dorset.  Eric took me to a spot that should have been teeming with the tasty fungi: We hiked up a logging road with wide, high berms that were flanked on both sides by clusters of ash trees.  The earth was damp from a spring creek, and there were plenty of rotting tree trunks in which morels and other mushrooms like to take root.

Despite the seemingly perfect habitat and despite our peeled eyes, we did not see a single morel. What a pissah! We kept thinking we’d see one every time we came upon a cluster of ash trees, but we kept getting skunked. Eric said the experience was a lot like deer hunting because he always expects to see a huge buck when he’s creeping through the woods.  Notably, we were not far from the spot where Eric shot his deer last fall.  We figured that someone else must have gone into the woods before us and scooped up all the morels.  Sigh.

I asked Eric earlier in the week if anyone at Orvis had found any morels. He said that he hadn’t heard of anyone having any luck, with the exception of Jim Lepage, who hits the morel jackpot every year.  Jim bagged 20 pounds of them. Son of a gun.

Have you had any luck finding morels? In what kind of habitat are you finding them?

(Photo from MykoWeb.)

Fiddlehead Ferns, Ramps and Morels

Eric, Toby and I went foraging for fiddleheads, ramps (aka wild leeks) and morels on Sunday in Arlington and Manchester, Vermont.  Sadly, we didn’t find any morels; the earth was too dry at the time. Although most of the ferns had almost completely unfurled, we managed to collect several handfuls of bright green, tighly coiled fiddleheads.

We had the best luck with ramps. We probably picked close to two pounds.  I’ll never forget seeing ramps for sale for $14/lb. at a Whole Foods in Wayland, Massachusetts a few years ago. I remember thinking it was crazy to pay so much money for a food you could easily find in the woods.  I can only imagine what a pound of wild leeks fetches these days at a Whole Foods. Do I hear $20/lb.? (Going, going, sold to the sucker driving the Saab!)

I bought salmon steaks at the grocery store to prepare en papillote for dinner Sunday night.  I couldn’t wait to cook them with the wild leeks and fiddleheads.  Unfortunately, I could only find farm-raised salmon at Shaw’s, which I’m never going to buy again. It’s bad for the environment, according to Eric, and not nearly as healthful as wild salmon. It’s much more fatty and tastes more fishy.

I seasoned both sides of the salmon steaks with salt and pepper and placed them on slices of lemon on top of the parchment paper.  I topped the the steaks with fresh parsley and dill and lots of ramps, crimped the parchment, and baked the steaks at 350 for about 20 minutes.

This was a great way to prepare farm-raised salmon because the lemon, herbs and ramps offset the fishy flavor the salmon, which, I must say, came out delicious.  I served the fish with steamed fingerling potatoes and steamed fiddleheads.  The fiddleheads were so good!  They tasted so fresh and green.  The ramps tasted amazing, too.  I just love the taste of a roasted wild leek.

The weather this week has been conducive to mushroom growth.  Eric is going turkey hunting tomorrow, and I’m hoping he’ll be able to find some morels or maybe even some chanterelles while he’s in the woods.  I’m dying to make a quiche with ramps and morels.  Unless I go out tomorrow at lunch, I don’t think I’ll have a chance to get back into the woods to forage until late next week, and by that time it may get dry again and the morels may be gone.

Of course, I hope Eric will come home with a turkey, too!

Even More Fiddleheads

Eric went fishing last night and came home with a handful of fiddleheads he picked alongside the Battenkill. And I thought I had missed the boat on this year’s fiddlehead crop.

I realized last night the reason why the water that I used to steam the fiddleheads when I cooked them the other night turned rust: The fiddleheads have a thin husk around them, which is a rusty color. Even though I tried to remove most of these husks from the fiddleheads before I steamed them, I could tell there were pieces of husk within the coiled ferns. The color from these husks must have leached out into the cooking liquid while the baby ferns were steaming.

Dandelion Greens

I decided to pick some dandelion greens this evening. I’ve never eaten them before, and I wanted to try them. See what the fuss was about. I quickly filled the basket from my salad spinner with bunches of the long, narrow scalloped leaves that I plucked from the unkempt flower beds in my front yard.

If you’ve never picked dandelion greens before and decide to do so, I caution against picking ones that grow between sidewalk cracks or along sidewalks, as those are likely to have been peed on by a dog. I do recommend running lots of cold water over the dandelion greens you do pick, giving the wet leaves a good twirl in your salad spinner, rinsing the bowl of your salad spinner between twirls, and then repeating that process two or three times to make sure you get all of the dirt off the greens. I couldn’t get over the amount of muddy water that collected in my salad spinner after my first whirl.

I sampled a leaf while I was wrapping them up in a damp paper towel to store in my fridge. The flavor was mild at first, perhaps a bit citrusy, but as my teeth macerated the leaf, the taste grew increasingly, powerfully bitter. “Blech,” I said.

It’s a funny thing, eating weeds.

Do you like dandelion greens? How do you eat them? I, for one, am going to need a lot of Cheez Whiz to get these greens down.