the Giant Puffball and the Sacred Grove

Last week, the branch kitchen was invaded by a monster: a giant puffball mushroom, easily twice the size of my head, came rolling in, being pushed along by a regular customer who knew that I would appreciate it. Puffballs, when very fresh, are a tasty treat. They are a bit unusual in texture, but are excellent at picking up marinades, as their flesh acts almost exactly like a sponge. I enjoy grilling large slices of it, like a steak, finishing it in the oven and then, since it has little flavour of its own, serving it with a bright spicy sauce. For this one, we used seasonal local tomatillos and chilies for a salsa verde. My reason for favoring this particular preparation for puffballs (as a steak) is a holdover from my vegetarian days, when mushrooms were my meat. My love of wild mushrooms began a few years back, when I was working in California.

Millennium Restaurant, the vegan mecca where I earned my stripes, is a unique place, and at its center is a culinary mad scientist named Eric Tucker whose incessant curiosity is overshadowed only by his senses of wonder and of humour. I have often said, to those who will listen, that only twice in my life have I been seated in a restaurant, read the menu, and said, “I completely understand what this chef is trying to do.” The first time was in 1996 when I sat in Millennium’s dining room and was astounded to find that someone else did not think vegan food had to be boring, staid, or one dimensional. Descriptions jumped off the page; each dish seemed to contain twenty different elements and to be bursting with ideas. Lotus root pickles, smoked tofu, miso glazed eggplant, seitan medallions...I had been cooking vegetarian food for several years at this point and searching incessantly for a kindred spirit who believed, as I did, that vegetarian food could leap off the plate and attack the diner, that it did not have to stay in the world of careful banality, that it could be good, good for you, good for the planet, and wildly creative all at the same time. I had found my man.

Within a few weeks of that meal, my relentless pestering paid off and I found myself employed at what for me, at that time, was my dream job. To Eric, vegan cuisine was not different from any other kind of cooking. He approached it as an exciting, innovative high end cuisine from which one had simply chosen to subtract all meats and dairy. He never considered it to be a hindrance; in fact, if anything, it was a challenge. He thought of his cuisine as being like an ethnic cuisine, and in the same way that a Chinese restaurant does not apologize for its lack of hamburgers, he never apologized or felt shorted for the choices Millennium had made in regards to the use of animal protiens. One of the results of this creative and innovative approach to cooking was a new way of looking at the world of ingredients that would often serve only as a props or a bit players for the main course in a conventional restaurant. An example of this was in the examination of the world of chilies. That which could have been simply a seasoning or an ingredient for someone else became, under a culinary microscope, an entire exciting obsession that revealed the capsicum families’ incredible variety; from the sun-ripened red bell pepper’s almost sickly sweetness to the habañero’s heat of near psychedelic intensity, chilies that were bright with every color of the rainbow, and chilies that had textures ranging from steak-like to brittle, even chilies and peppers whose broad array of aromatic qualities is rivaled only on the spice routes of ancient India and the Middle East. Chilies were not the only ingredients we studied whose special qualities were revealed to blossom under closer scrutiny. We also explored the worlds of meat substitutes which came from millennial-aged traditions in Asia and plumbed the depths of the spice rack and the fascinating world of many other heirloom vegetables, grains, oils, and even wines, beers and spirits...

But as amazing as all of the voyages of discovery were, the most fascinating, by far, was the Kingdom of Fungi; aka, mushrooms. Mushrooms are interesting for a number of reasons: for vegetarians, especially vegans, they are a vital source of necessary B vitamins which are not found in plants. This is because mushrooms are not, in fact, plants; they exist in their own kingdom, neither plant nor animal, but rather, having features that are actually a bit of both. This biological kingdom includes not only mushrooms but also yeasts, the magic creatures that bring us not only bread, but also those wines, beers, and spirits we were talking about earlier. It even includes molds, a much maligned and misunderstood set of creatures that while often being the very symbol of blight, are also the source of some of our world’s most interesting flavours. But the kings of this kingdom are undoubtedly the mushroom: the mighty fruit of the mycelium, a world that can bring years of new joys and pleasures, a world whose gateway is the little white button, that once pushed, can carry you from the satisfying earthy meatiness of a portabella, through to the cinnamon perfume of the chanterelle, down into the incredible beefy flavor depths and satisfying texture of the porcini, even all the way to an ecstatic place found far beyond simple food-- the worlds most sought after culinary/mystical experience--the truffle.

Our wild mushroom purveyor in those days was a woman named Connie Green; a character who on the one hand was obviously an efficient and urban businessperson, but on the other, much like the product she peddled, shrouded in a sort of mystery and magic. Something about her persona carried an aura of secret knowledge that brought to mind gypsies or a ‘twig in the hair’ priestess from some ancient pagan rite. Yet somehow, she always seemed down to earth and quite capably modern. Her world was not a simple, hippy-dippy world of woodland creatures and fairy tales; in fact it would be more accurate to say that she lived not in, but rather on the edge of the forest. The mushrooms she brought came to her through a community of pickers who were described at times as shadowy or mysterious...strange, nameless fanatical types who camped and picked and lived in the woods for months at a time—and while Connie regularly met with these folks and dealt with them on their own unusual terms, she also answered phone messages, sent out regular and professional faxes and order sheets, and appeared on our decidedly less than mystical doorstep in the urban wilds of downtown San Francisco without fail, always with the requested fungi in hand, fresh, well cared for, and professionally packaged. I appreciated her attention to business, of course, but to be honest, it was the world to which she seemed to hold the keys that really fascinated me. Somehow, through this weekly exchange of modern arcana for mycological treasure, I became at first interested in the world of wild mushrooms, then fascinated and finally hooked. A new and exciting obsession began to emerge from the forest floor of my imagination and I found myself looking more closely at the strange bits of knowledge that seemed to be sprouting everywhere around me, from the lawns and wooded parks of my neighborhood, to the pages of my cookbooks and magazines, where once overlooked mentions of mushrooms now seemed to pop up like a fairy ring on a grassy field the morning after a rainy night. I eventually went so far as to purchase and start memorizing a field guide, in fact, the field guide for California mushrooming, it was a bible of sorts, under the title ‘All the Rain Promises and More’ by David Arora.

Once a year, Connie and one of her contemporaries, Todd ‘the King of Mushrooms’ Spanier, offered an opportunity for interested amateurs, mostly cooks and the like from various San Francisco area restaurants, to join them in a hunt. When that opportunity finally came to our restaurant, I rushed to be first in line. A bus was rented, a time (very early) was set, and the foray was on. That hunt, my very first, was in one of the primeval Redwood forests that still manage to cover some small part of California’s Sierra Nevada Mountains. I will never forget tramping through those cool damp woods under Connie and Todd’s careful instruction, seeking the elusive ‘mush-rumps’ on the thatch-y humus bedding which was the floor of that quiet, bright, and pine scented cathedral. That sacred grove, where for one perfect morning, I wandered smiling and fulfilled, seeking and finding treasures in the mist, and I did it all with the contentment of a true and natural creature, while time slowed, crawled and finally stood completely still. I will never forget the elation of my first finds, Boletus Edulis, known in the culinary sphere as the porcini or the cêpe, and in the mushroom hunting world, as the King Bolete. These rich heavy mushrooms are the lions of the mushroom world, unparalleled in their unique combination of both weight and flavour. In addition, we found chanterelles, also considered to be a choice find, even preferred in some circles to the King Bolete. The ‘chanties’ were big and golden, fat and strongly scented with cinnamon, frankincense and musk. That day was easily one of my finest moments; it has inspired a lifelong passion and has given me reason to return to the woods again and again from California, throughout the Pacific Northwest, in Colorado, Texas, New Brunswick and Ontario, as well as many other places, even in the mountains of Italy and France. I rarely travel without a mushroom hunt in mind. It has turned me into the type of person who smiles when it rains, smiles knowing what treasure the rain will bring. I was, and still am, hooked. Of course, there is one other reason to remember that day (I was at the time young, single, and definitely looking), for I was accompanied by not only a couple of my fellow employees from Millennium, but also by a beautiful intern who had arrived to work with us from Ottawa, Ontario (of all places) just the week before.

The second time I sat down in a restaurant and said “I understand exactly what this chef is trying to do” was here in Kemptville at Amanda’s Slip, the restaurant that preceded us here at 15 Clothier Street East. Again I was right, and the work there turned not only into a great learning experience, but when AJ (the previous owner and the chef in question) got ready to move on, it turned into not only a home base for my foraging forays, but a home for myself and that beautiful intern, now my wife, Nicole.

So now you know why when the puffballs, or for that matter, the boletes, morels, chanterelles, candy caps, almond, russula, honey, hawkwing, lion’s mane, hen of the woods, or any of a thousand other varieties of wild mushrooms come rolling along, I smile. I love the taste and the smell and the excitement that only a wild mushroom can bring...but mostly, I love the magic of a place in my life, my memories of all those cool damp mornings, but especially of one morning, a perfect morning I spent wandering, seeking, finding and falling in love, one fine morning spent, and spent well in a sacred grove.