Dryad's Saddles

Dryad's Saddles -- also known as the Pheasant's Back, or Polyporus squamosus -- is as easily identifiable mushroom for anyone looking to dip a toe in the great, complex and sometimes scary stream of wild mushroom foraging. I love mushrooms, but am a very tentative mushroomer, only slowly adding to my short list of species I am comfortable enough identifying to bring home to the dinner table.

Giant puffballs or breadloaf mushrooms are probably the first wild mushroom to try, as long as you pick them when they are at least softball sized to ensure that you haven't mixed them up with an emerging head of some other type.  None of the puffballs are poisonous and once they get to a decent size, there is nothing else that looks like them (unless you've inadvertently picked up an old soccer ball that has been sitting in the woods for years).

While there are many other shelf- or bracket-type fungus, Dryad's Saddles are simple to recognize. They have a short, thick angled stem, a curve downward to the stem, a feathery or almost shingle-like top, and most distinctively, a spongy underside of hollow tubes -- NOT gills, and NOT a hard flat bottom surface. The only other mushroom close to meeting this description would be the beefsteak mushroom, another bracket polypore, but it is pink to red, and fortunately is also edible so if you manage to confuse the two, you'll still be okay.

When Dryad's Saddles get older they get brown and dry, but then they are too tough to eat. Way too tough. So be sure to go for the light tan ones with brown feathery tops.

In May and June, look for these about two days after a rainstorm, on hardwood trees and stumps. They'll pop up literally overnight. Pick those that are flexible and have a light tan top like the ones pictured. Often they'll be about 4" across, in groups of 3 or 4. These two, growing right next to one another, had popped out to a full 8" across after we had a big downpour following several very dry weeks.

Sliced up and sauteed with butter and wild ramps, served with foraged fiddleheads or young turnip greens thinned from the early garden bed, they make a wonderful hearty spring meal, free and fresh from the wilds.

Chanterelles

Golden chanterelles, as precious as summer sunshine. Dinner tonight: Salad of fresh greens, a bowl of green peas in the pod, sumac and raspberry leaf tea, and chanterelle puffs, a light simple little fritter that lets the delicate earthy flavor of these mushrooms shine through.

I have a confession to make: I did not pick these chanterelles myself. There are a small number of mushrooms that I am confident picking and eating--dryad's saddles, morels, angel wings--and every couple years I add one or two more to that list. Chanterelles have not quite made it onto my complete confidence list. I have found carpets of them a few times... I think...but at the last minute I was not totally certain so I let them lie. Maybe in a year or two...

Meanwhile I bought this batch from a gentleman who sells wildcrafted foods at the Middlebury Vermont Farmer's Market. With my own gardening and foraging, it's not too often that I actually buy produce from someone else, so I was really excited about this.

Then I had to decide how to cook them. A simple saute in butter is always splendid with wild mushrooms, as is an omelet. Mushrooms and eggs just seem to go together. I opted for this suggestions from the Mycological Society of San Francisco Cookbook, and I'm glad I did. The buttery simplicity, the melt in your mouth texture of the dough against the chewy woodsy flavor of the mushrooms -- pure heaven.

Recipe: Golden Chanterelle Puffs

1 cup chicken broth (I used my fresh-made vegetable stock instead)
1/2 pound or so minced chanterelles
1 stick butter
1 tsp. sea salt
1 cup unbleached flour
3 eggs

Preheat oven to 450 and lightly butter a cookie sheet. Heat the broth in a saucepan; add mushrooms, butter and salt and bring to a boil. Slowly stir in flour a little at a time. Remove from heat and beat in eggs one at a time. Drop dough by tablespoons onto the cookie sheet, and bake for about 15 minutes until lightly golden brown on top. Cool them on a rack, then try not to devour them all at once. They are splendid slightly warm, and even better cold for lunch the next day.

Sumac Tea: Free Summer Refreshment

The staghorn sumac, or Rhus typhina, grows as a 'weed tree' around these parts. It expands into islands about 20 feet out from the edges of woodlands in abandoned meadows, like the forest advance-guard, clearing the way for the aspen and birches to follow. As a kid I loved to play inside those island thickets, the tropical-looking leaf fronds forming a perfect roof and the open spaces between the trunks creating so many imaginary rooms.

Beginning in mid-July the staghorn sumac puts out distinct fuzzy red cone-shaped flower and berry clusters. Different stands seem to develop these velvety flower cones at different times from mid-summer to early fall, and I've not detected any particular rhyme or reason to the timing. The nice thing is, some patch nearby is always at its peak.

I use a pocket knife to snap off the whole berry clusters. You can just break them off with your hands, but sometimes the supporting twigs are a little tough, and you wind up either getting a mess of sap on your hands or breaking off a larger branch unnecessarily. Granted, sumacs are common as house cats so a small broken branch is not a huge disaster in the scope of the world, but still, it seems gratuitous, and besides, I like using my pocketknife.

At home, gently stuff the whole red berry cones into a glass jar. Fill with cold water. Let steep in a cool place, either just sitting indoors or, if it's not too hot out, in a sunny spot, but don't let it get too warm. The longer it steeps, the stronger it gets. Initially the brew will be a light pink with a mild refreshing flavor. As it gets darker it takes on tones of a hibiscus or rose hip tea, which it also resembles in its crisp, thirst quenching flavor. Strain the tea out through a cheesecloth or fine tea strainer, as the fuzzy bits from the berries can be irritating to the throat. You can sweeten it with simple syrup, honey or agave syrup, or drink it as is (I like it plain). It also makes a nice mix with green tea, or with a bit of lemon. 

If you leave sumac tea for a day or two, the color will turn black. This doesn't affect its flavor at all but it's not quite so appealing looking as that rosy pink freshness. I've read that sumac tea is high in Vitamin A and Vitamin C, though wild foods like sumac have not been the subject of much in the way of serious nutritional and medical research. The tea certainly has that high-vitamin-C red tanginess about it, and it has been consumed by residents of North America for thousands of years, so it stands to reason that, at the very least, it's not bad for you.

I've seen instructions on the internet saying boil water and make sumac tea like you would a hot herbal tea. Give it a try if you like but I don't think you'll like it; boiling releases the tannins and gives you a nasty bitter brew. If you want hot tea, steep the sumac at cool temperatures, strain out the sumac, then heat the tea in a mug in the microwave.

As with any new food, some people may have unexpected allergic reactions or intolerances, so don't go drinking a few gallons of sumac tea the first time you try it. Make a small glass and see if you experience any adverse effects at all; if so, leave it at that. More importantly, make sure you harvest sumac berries from a location that has not been sprayed with agricultural chemicals or road-and right-of-way clearing herbicides. These are much more likely to cause you ill effects than the sumac berries themselves. Sumac that is growing as part of a formal landscape is probably off limits both from an aesthetic and trespassing point of view as well as by virtue of likely having been doused with chemicals.

That said, sumac is abundant and often grows in neglected places where picking a few berry cones will do no harm at all. Its delicious tea is healthful, refreshing, and free, the perfect antidote to sugar and artificial color laden tubs of fake iced tea and lemonade mix. Better yet, it's an easy way to step into wildcrafting, and sharing the seasonal bounty of the local landscape.

Fiddleheads!

Photos by Jack Rowell

Fiddlehead Fever: Succulent Scrolls of Spring

                              

The first of May is celebrated around Vermont in many guises, from flower baskets to the first lighting of the barbecue grill to organized labor demonstrations.  But no May Day festivity quite combines the sense of magic of the season with independent Green Mountain spirit of living off the land as an annual pilgrimage to pick fiddleheads.  These deliciously coiled new sprouts of the ostrich fern (Matteuccia struthiopteris), named for their resemblance to the scroll at the tuning-peg end of a violin fingerboard, can be picked and eaten in Vermont with patriotic pride: they are our official state vegetable. 

Fiddleheads grow in alluvial and swamp muck soils from the far northern reaches of tundra to the bottomlands of Virginia, but folks in Vermont and Maine (where some call them ‘fiddlegreens’) have a special affinity for these elegant spring sprouts, which share the early season with such other wild-crafted delicacies as early dandelion greens and the first shoots of wild garlic. Restaurants across Vermont pay good money to local pickers to put fiddleheads on their plates beside the earliest spring-caught trout, possibly more to see the looks on tourists’ faces as they pick curiously at the strange green stems than for purposes of actually serving a nutritious, delicious vegetable.

Fiddleheads have their own unique taste, but it’s comfortingly similar to a good green bean or nice fresh asparagus.  While they can be eaten raw as a crunchy antipasto, do be warned that the Center for Disease Control has connected a few outbreaks of food-borne illnesses with raw fiddlehead consumption.  This is most likely due to residues of pollutants from the rivers whose bottomlands the fiddlehead inhabits.  No reports of health problems have been associated with washed and well-cooked fiddleheads. 

True fiddlehead afficionados hold their favorite fiddle-picking spots as safe-guarded secrets, protecting them with the same possessiveness as a Hobbit exhibits over his mushroom patch (and  fiddleheaders have been known to keep a weather eye out for the occasional early morel as well).   Fortunately, there are plenty such spots to go around along the banks of any of Vermont’s major waterways, from the White to the Black, the Otter to the Poultney.   Look for last year’s ostrich fern bases inside bends in a river, where March flooding has overwashed a sandy island and ancient willows drape their flowering wands in verdant curtains over budding pillows of dutchman’s breeches.  Or cheat and keep an eye out for where people are suddenly parking their cars and dashing off with buckets – the landlubber’s equivalent of fishing for runs of blues by watching where the other boats are clustering. 

Pick fiddleheads by simply snapping off the curls which have cleared the top of last year’s fern base cluster, but have not yet unfurled and are still wrapped in their papery brown scale covering.  Never pick all of the fiddleheads from any one fern crown; leave some to unfurl and gather energy back into the roots to support next year’s crop.  Walk gently around the fern bases, and try not to pick in a spot that other people have already heavily picked over. 

When you get your fiddleheads home, you’ll need to remove those papery brown scales that cover the overwintering fern crown.  There doesn’t seem to be any substitute to sitting on the front porch and picking these off by hand, one by one, but I have had some luck submersing the fiddleheads in a bowl of cold water.  I let them soak for about fifteen minutes, then place the bowl in the sink and let more cold water flow gently into it, allowing the brown scales to simply float away.  Sort of.  At least some  do. Then you still have to pick the rest off, so suit yourself. 

If you want more elegant looking fiddleheads, while picking off the covering, you can rub off the small leaves that may have begun to sprout out the sides, revealing a clearer spiral shape; you can also take a sharp knife and put a clean edge on the bottom stems, which may darken slightly where they were broken. 

As with all food wildcrafting, do exercise caution.  There is a slight danger of mistaking the edible fiddlehead ferns for other fern shoots like those of the Bracken Fern, which are known to be carcinogenic.  However, no fern but the edible fiddleheads has the distinct papery brown wrapping; most ferns are either smooth or have fuzz and fur. And should you make a mistaken identification, one taste should clue you in: most other ferns are intensely bitter and acerbic on the tongue.  If you are not completely confident of your plant identification skills, hook up with a skilled fiddleheader, bring along a fern field guide, or buy your fiddleheads at an early farmers market or your natural foods store – which saves you the trouble of getting that brown papery stuff off.

Your fiddleheads will taste their best if you cook them as soon as possible after picking.  As soon as you give up and admit defeat on getting all those papery scales off, get a pot of salted water boiling.  Drop the fiddleheads into the salted water (if you put them in first then bring the water up to boil, they’ll overcook and be mushy).  If you are going to use the fiddleheads in a dish requiring additional cooking – a quiche, soup, or in canning – five minutes ought to be about right.  If you are going to eat them out of the pot or marinade them, you’ll probably need closer to ten minutes of cooking time. 

Marinated Fiddleheads, Fresh or Canned

The simplest way to enjoy fiddleheads is to saute up some garlic in butter while they are cooking in the boiling salted water.  Drain the fiddleheads well, then toss them with the butter, garlic, and a squeeze of fresh lemon juice.  Or mix up a good fresh Italian-style salad dressing with olive oil, cider vinegar, and fresh herbs to taste.  Amply drench the cooked fiddleheads in the dressing and let them marinade for a few hours before serving, or pack them into pint canning jars with approximately one-half inch headspace and process in a boiling water bath canner for ten minutes. Serve marinated fiddleheads at room temperature, on their own or over pasta or rice.

Blue Cheese Fiddlehead Crepes

My favorite, more elaborate way to eat fiddleheads is in blue cheese fiddlehead crepes, which I devised twenty years ago while living on the fiddlehead-rich banks of the White River. All proportions are simply to taste: 

Fiddleheads, lightly boiled and drained.

Garlic

Sweet white onion (or wild onion and garlic shoots)

butter

salt

white pepper (fresh ground black pepper may substitute, but not as aesthetically pleasing)

blue stilton, or other strong blue cheese

prepared crepes

prepared white sauce (flour, butter, and sweet cream)

chives

parmesan cheese

Preheat over to 300 degrees.  Saute garlic and sweet white onion in butter with salt and white pepper. Toss in the fiddleheads, then crumble in some strong blue cheese such as Blue Stilton.  Roll tightly in prepared crepes. Put the rolled crepes, seam side down, in a buttered lasagne pan. Add more crumbled blue cheese to your prepared simple white sauce, and pour over the crepes. and top with fresh chopped chive (or more wild onion and garlic shoots) and parmesan cheese.  Cover with foil or a glass lid and bake for 20 to 30 minutes, until they crepes are heated through.  Serve with a light rice pilaf, some slices of fresh lemon, and fresh ground pepper. 

Fiddlehead Quiche

Fiddleheads can substitute for the asparagus, green beans, or other vegetables in most quiche or cheese pie recipes, and makes a fine gratin with a well-aged Gruyere.  This variant of the classic Quiche Lorraine is simple, and works equally well for a hearty breakfast with homefries and toast, or a light dinner with a side soup or salad.

Pastry for 9-inch one-crust pie

6 slices bacon (optional – or substitute vegetarian bacon or tempeh) crisply fried and crumbled

1 cup lightly boiled fiddleheads

3/4 cup shredded Swiss cheese

3/4 cup shredded sharp Cheddar cheese

½ cup finely chopped onion (or slice onion in rounds and saute on low in butter until carmelized)

4 eggs

2 cups cream

3/4 tsp. Salt

½ tsp. Pepper

½ tsp. Cayenne pepper (or, for milder flavor, paprika)

Preheat over to 425 degrees. Prepare pastry.  Sprinkle bacon over bottom of pastry-lined plate.  Top with half of the cheese, then layer in the fiddleheads and onion, then the second half of the cheese.  In a medium mixing bowl with a whisk or hand beater, beat eggs well, then beat in cream and spices.  Cook in 425 degree oven for fifteen minutes, then reduce temperature to 300 degrees.  (To help avoid browned crust, you can cover the crust edge with a ring of aluminum foil for the first 15 minutes of baking.)  Cook approximately 30 minutes more, until a knife inserted half way between edge and center of pie comes out clean.  Let stand 10 to 15 minutes before serving.