This bounty is from the best garden of all: Nature untended. I’ve been collecting mushroom for eats (mycophagy) since the Carter Administration. The summer/fall of 2011 is by far the best mushroom year I’ve ever known in the Northeast. So much frigging rain. These are all from Bridgehampton, Long Island, plucked last week.
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Puffballs. I’ve never seen so many in one spot (in a meadow, around elm trees). Not my favorite, gustatorily speaking. Kind of bland, like tofu, but they do absorb whatever flavor you fry them in (garlic and butter, in my case).
Two things about Hurricane Irene: she brought lots of rain and knocked down trees. Mushrooms love it when that happens. This superb specimen is a chicken mushroom (Sulphurous polyporus), so-called not because it tastes like chicken but because of the texture–truly like a succulent piece of chicken breast when cooked.
Another one growing high up on a tree. I couldn’t reach it!