78 animal, vegetable, miracle
The mushroom genus Morchella contains some of the most highly
prized of all edible wild fungi. Morels fruit in the spring, and just to keep
you on your toes regarding the wild mushroom situation, they contain
toxic hemolysins that destroy red blood cells—chemicals that are ren-
dered harmless during cooking. (Just don’t eat them raw.) Their close rel-
atives, the Gyromitra, are pure poison, but the edible morels look different
enough from anything else that they’re safe to collect, even for novice
mushroomers like me. Their distinctive tall caps are cupped and wrinkled
in a giraffish pattern unique to their kind. Here in the eastern woodlands
we have the black, common, tulip, and white morels, and one unfortu-
nate little cousin called (I am so sorry) the Dog Pecker. All are edible ex-
cept for the last one. They’re similar enough in ecology and fruiting time
that we’ve sometimes gathered many types on the same day, from the
same wooded areas. I’ve heard them called Molly Mooch, sponge mush-
rooms, haystacks, dryland fish, and snakeheads. What everyone agrees on
is that they’re delicious.
Wild mushrooms are among the few foods North Americans still eat
that must be hunted and gathered. Some fungi are farmed, but exotics
like the morel defy all attempts at domestication. Maybe that’s part of
what we love about them. “With their woodsy, earthy, complex fl avors and
aromas, and their rich, primeval colors and forms,” writes Alice Waters,
wild mushrooms bring to our kitchens “a reminder that all the places we
inhabit were once wildernesses.” They are also incredibly hard to fi nd,
very good at looking exactly like a little pile of curled, dead brown leaves
on the forest floor. In my early days of Molly Mooching, I could stand
with my boots touching one without spotting it until it was pointed out to
me. They’re both particular and mysterious about where they grow: in old
apple orchards, some people vow, while others insist it’s only around the
roots of tulip poplars or dying elms. Whatever the secret, the Molly
Mooches do know it, because they tend to show up in the same spot year
after year.
On our farm we could have walked the woods for the rest of our lives
without finding one, because they don’t grow near our roads or trails,
they’ve never shown up in our old apple orchard, and they’re shy of all
other places we normally frequent. Where they do grow is in Old Charley’s