The delight of picking mushrooms

By Jack Elliott
Correspondent

Earlier settlers and First Nations inhabitants knew the secrets of the little edible tidbits and delights that grow throughout our natural habitat. This is a knowledge base that seems to be disappearing. But if you make the effort to talk to some wise elders and search the internet, there are some gourmet delights to be found right in your own back yard.
Early autumn is a great time for mushrooms and Matt Gerula of Rainy River showed the secrets of one of his favourites what he calls pipanki and is commonly called the ringed Honey Mushroom. These delightful morsels are tiny, ranging in size from a dime to a loonie and found around the lawn in semi shade along fences and under trees. They are light brown in colour and take sharp eyes and bent knees to find and collect. This year there appears to be a particularly abundant crop of them.
Matt has been collecting mushrooms for many decades and looks for only four wild varieties. We have all heard the admonition, “Beware of the mushrooms. They might be poisonous”. It is good advice to heed. Before eating or collecting any wild mushroom make sure you have the guidance of an experienced expert like Matt.
A Google search on the internet will quickly provide a good list of resources for indentifying and collecting wild mushrooms. “Russell’s Field Guide to the Wild Mushrooms of Pennsylvania and the Mid-Atlantic shows the reader not only how to identify the most common mushrooms found in the region but also how to avoid common copycats.” It is in the first several of over 1400 hits on the subject on Google.
According to David Fischer’ website, http://americanmushrooms.com “about 250 North American species are known to be edible (though only about half of these are truly worthwhile), and a similar number are known to be poisonous; the rest we’re not sure about. NOTE: Most of the common, conspicuous, attractive mushrooms are known to be either edible or toxic.”
But back to Matt Gerula, my expert.
“After you pick the pipanki, put them in a pot of water and bring it to a boil. This brings a froth to the top, which you skim off, change the water, and repeat 2 or 3 times to clean them of grass, dirt and sand.,” advises Matt.
“Then I freeze them for future use. Frozen or fresh you just pop them into a frying pan with a bit of butter and cream. You can also add pepper and salt, and garlic and onions, if you like. When the cream cooks down a bit, they’re ready. Umm, Umm, good,” he adds.