A vegan goes stalking wild mushrooms in the Pine Barrens

ON A RECENT Saturday afternoon, I finally went hunting. I was outfitted to fight the elements and loaded for - not bear, but certainly hen of the woods and other kinds of wild-growing edible mushrooms.

Armed with a knife and an old grocery bag, I set out with fungi enthusiast and local photographer Michele Frentrop and expert mushroom collector Felix Giordano to earn our food just like our ancestors did. Well, Felix's ancestors, anyway. I doubt mine ever had a plant-based meal that didn't originate in a freezer.

It was a cool, misty day, which Frentrop said was good, both as a mood setter and because "we can see the mushrooms better without sunshine."

There'd be less foraging competition, too, she added.

Oh, right. I should mention two things here:

We were headed for somewhere in the Pine Barrens - you'll get nothing more specific than that out of me. Forager's code, man.

And, of course, do not read this story and head out on your own looking for edible mushrooms. You must have a Felix Giordano or local equivalent with you. He, by the way, has been collecting mushrooms in the Pine Barrens since he was 6. Now 68, he was schooled by his dad and uncle.

A quick review: There are poisonous mushrooms and nonpoisonous ones. It takes an expert eye to tell them apart.

Within that second category are "edible" and "inedible" varieties. The latter won't hurt you but are either too tough for eating or flavorless. Some people also have allergic reactions to one mushroom type or another, Giordano noted.

Most authorities agree that all mushrooms should be cooked before eating. "There are only two kinds I would eat raw," said Giordano. "White button mushrooms and chicken [of-the-woods, a different variety than hen], if it was really fresh."

This was relevant because we had ventured only a few feet into the pines when we found some chicken-of-the-woods that was, unfortunately, too old to bother with, its taste and chewability having reached shoe-leather levels.

When fresh, the bright, tannish-orange chicken "looks like chicken cutlets," Giordano said. It can be used in place of chicken in some dishes.

Further ahead, I found an interesting cluster of golden-brown mushrooms on a rotting log. But when I pointed them out to Giordano, he just shrugged.

"Yeah. LBMs."

Little Brown Mushrooms.

These, I learned, are all the varieties you don't care about identifying because they're probably poisonous, inedible or edible but flavorless. Fascinating to a professional mycologist, perhaps, they're junk finds for our expert forager, because if you don't wanna eat 'em, what's the point?

"I know about 10 to 12 different kinds of mushrooms really well that grow around here," Giordano explained, offhandedly. "The others I just don't bother with."

He pointed out a couple of chubby, slimy slippery jacks (Suillus Luteus), barely discernible beneath some dead leaves. "Those are OK for eating," he said.

He then saw a couple of attractive white mushrooms standing tall out of the leaves like fully opened umbrellas. "Those are some kind of amanitas," he said, with a shrug. It wasn't worth trying to identify them further because they would either be bad-tasting or outright poisonous.

The slippery jacks were plentiful, much more so than the honey mushrooms (Armillaria Mellea) that Frentrop and Giordano had thought would be out. (They did go back the next weekend and found a lot of honeys, they later told me.)

"My folks used to call [the jacks] porcini," mused Giordano. "They're in the boletus family." He explained that mushrooms tend to pick up different common names in different places. Hen-of-the-woods (Grifola Frondosa) is known in Japan as maitake.

More than once, Frentrop hoisted a specimen to my nose and asked me to smell. "Earthy, isn't it?" she enthused. I had to agree: yeah, earthy, got it.

By midday, our trio was more dispersed throughout the silent, misty pine forest, though within seeing/hearing distance, and still not more than a few yards from the road. I was now more confident in looking on my own, though I still wouldn't touch anything without corroboration.

At one point, I checked the back side of a rotting stump and found a cluster of mushrooms sporting light-brown caps with a distinctive, reddish-brown coloring in the middle. I called to Giordano, who quickly and enthusiastically identified them as brick tops (Hypholoma Sublateritium).

"Good eating," he added.

Frentrop and I saw a couple of Amanita muscaria (fly agaric), which are so freakishly colorful - reddish-orange tops with whitish polka dots - that they look like the classic cartoon toadstool.

"Some places it's called the stupefying mushroom," Giordano said, because of its hallucinogenic effect. "You can make a bug spray out of it. It won't kill the bug, it will just get them stoned."

We continued gathering slippery jacks into the late afternoon. By now, it was easy to spot them hiding in the leaves.

We wound up with enough mushrooms to fill a milk crate, divvied them up and headed home. Frentrop helped me cook the slippery jacks in oil, thyme and wine. I also sauteed the brick tops in garlic.

We put the mushrooms in pitas and took a bite. Maybe it was the long, long day. Maybe it was the misty forest. Maybe it was the satisfaction of having caught our own food. But that was the best-tasting mushroom sandwich I've ever had.

Texturewise it was less award-winning: The slippery jacks stayed slippery, since we had been too exhausted to peel the slimy top off each cap before cooking. Frentrop offered that a better use for these would be in a sauce or soup.

Still, I was satisfied, especially as I reflected on a day spent connecting with autumn in all its slow-changing glory - orange, brown, red and yellow hues splashed across a multitude of different organisms, some dying, others thriving on their passage. Somehow mushrooms, with their earthy quality, seem to bring all that to your plate.

PENNSYLVANIA and South Jersey are great places to look for a wide variety of wild mushrooms, from morels to chantarelles, puffballs to oysters, honey mushrooms to even "the king" of mushrooms, hen-of-the-woods.

But don't jump into it.

For reasons of both safety and culinary success, you'll want the aid of someone who really knows his fungi. Here are three local resources to start with:

Felix Giordano, felix.giordano@gmail.com.

Mycological Association of Greater Philadelphia, 610-925-2665, tephilmyco@aol.com.

New Jersey Mycological Association, njmyco.org.

writer, musician and 12-year vegan.

"V for Veg" chronicles plant-based

eating in and around Philadelphia.

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