Autumn Mushroom Season
As a mushroom fanatic, I look forward to autumn all year and then before I know it, there’s an urgent need for my winter coat and that wonderful mushroom time is nearly at an end.
With wild fungi appearing at different intervals throughout the seasons and large factory-like growing facilities cultivating certain types of mushrooms they are, of course, available all year but the best wild mushroom time is in autumn, when choice and availability are sky high. Now, don’t fear – just because you are searching for your woollen gloves, doesn’t mean mushroom season is over; with wild mushrooms being picked all over Europe and beyond, we can enjoy the best autumnal mushrooms right up to Christmas. Here are my top fungi to look out for in markets, delis and even some supermarkets right now.
The mighty cep
The mushroom with the biggest ego (and with good reason), cep – also known by their Italian name, porcini – are nicknamed ‘the king’ and coveted by all. It’s the one on the market that’s generally quite a size – anywhere from thumb size to the circumference of your whole hand – and looks like a proper mushroom; large umbrella-shaped chestnut-coloured glossy cap and a thick, meaty stem.
Field mushroom
Since the advent of large (and personally very welcome) mushroom growing facilities producing an abundance of edible agaricus type mushrooms (that’s button, closed-cup, flats, etc, to you and me), field mushrooms (also agaricus) have very quickly been pushed to the sidelines (where the cows eat them). But these naturally occurring fungi are quite different in taste and come in all kinds of funky shapes – they are allowed to grow how they like and, as mushrooms do, they suck up all the flavours of the land around them, making them quite special compared to their cultivated cousins.
The trompette
The trompette is also called the ‘trompette de la mort’ – translated to the trumpet of death, so named because of the black long hollow tubes look like hearing trumpets coming from the ground – for the dead and buried to hear. It is a sturdy yet delicate enigma of a mushroom and is looks really pretty on a plate . They are usually abundant in markets as they spread like wildfire once they get growing in a forest.