But, here:
Mention mushrooming to anyone and you will find, as I did, everyone has a great bit of advice; "if they look like cartoons, they're not edible", "if they're brown underneath they're good to eat", "my grandmother used to eat the ones that grew in the backyard, it'll be fine". Don't listen to that advice.
If you've ever been interested in actually finding out anything about mushrooms and fungi you NEED to go along to an Alison Pouliot workshop. Alison knows everything there is to know. And she brought along a super impressive collection of mushrooms that she found around Central Victoria for us to look at.
Now, I am a novice. I know nothing. So when we were presented with a box of mushrooms that had two varieties, one edible and one a poisonous doppelgänger, I said "Oh, mine looks waaaaay tastier than yours does" and out in the wild that would make me dead. Or at least very ill (but I don't know if I'm up for eating Slippery Jacks just yet anyway, even if I do know they are edible their slimy top is still a little creepy).
It pays to know, from a expert, what you're looking for. Turns out, many of the common mushrooms we forage for here in Australia have poisonous doppelgängers. And that most mushrooms are quite specific to regions, so if your Russian Nonna living down the street tells you that one is fine, she might be recalling that information from her childhood home and not factored into the equation the Aussie context. Do yo homework.
It also fascinates me that our attitudes to mushrooms here in Australia are very limited and cautious, whereas in parts of Europe foraging for mushrooms is a common activity for families and they put a lot of effort and time into learning to identify mushrooms. Alison told us in Switzerland it is common for people to train as kind of regulators; these people need to be able to correctly identify hundreds of mushrooms. Closer to home, in Asia they eat a wide variety not simply limited to the button mushrooms you find in our local Woolies. We seem to have developed a fear of mushrooms here. Which is not unfounded given that the Death Cap mushroom here only takes a tiny amount ingested to start shutting down organs. Death Cap mushrooms grow in Castlemaine Botanical Gardens, y'all, so it's not an irrational fear. But still, the more you know the less you fear.
More than just finding out how to identify some delicious, and some not so delicious, mushrooms I walked away with an entirely new found respect for the fungi community. Their contribution to our ecosystems is massive and largely unrecognised: they enable trees to communicate, they improve soils and they have symbiotic relationships that shape landscapes. Also, they need to keep their hats* on perfectly straight. (*hats is not the scientific name, it just makes them sound cuter).
Pine forests are a new adventure to me now I know that the Milky Saffron Cap Mushrooms are there for the picking and eating. Mushroom risotto never tasted so good, or free. (Free from anxiety now that I can also recognise a Death Cap).
This thing worth doing is not worth doing badly. You could die. I'm so glad I found an expert who is so passionate to help me discover this new skill. Thanks Alison, I would could not recommend your workshop enough.
