Little Green Book

Fungi Foraging is the new Freeganism...

Bite back at the credit crunch and get your Wild Food for Free. Autumn's just around the corner, so mushrooms and berries will be at their best. Check out mushroom and wild food foraging courses around Britain and remember to book early - they're always popular. Or take it a step further and go all-out on outdoor survival courses - you'll find details below...

If you're more of a home-body, don't forget to browse farmers markets for their finds or even order online... and don't forget, every business on this page is FoodLoversBritain.com Approved.

Visit Artisan Food Courses and Crafts for more cookery courses

Food Safari offers both Wild Food Days foraging in the coast and countryside and Seafood Days catching and cooking while river fishing.

Explore the countryside with Taste the Wild - foraging and cooking combined...

If you thought foraging was just mushrooms, Wild Man Wild Food  will give you food for thought...

Forage for all kinds of edible treats, then find out how to cook them professionally as part of Fat Hen's Gourmet and Foraging weekends

Forays and fungi walks around Greater London are available until late November with Fungi to Be With

Join Chris Bax at Swinton Park for a ramble around the countryside foraging for wild food before a cook-up of the findings for lunch

Forage your way through glorious countryside at The Wild Food School

Wilderness Survival Skills take foraging to a new level with outdoor survival courses, including catching fish and game

MORE FORAGING, WILD FOOD AND OUTDOOR COURSES

Forage FoodFinds for more foraging and outdoor courses

If you just want to eat wild mushrooms, have them cooked for you at Places to Eat around the country

Chris’s foodie philosophy at Ramsons Restaurant is elemental: Good food is a product of its environment...

EAT WILD MUSHROOMS...

Browse FoodFinds for restaurants serving seasonal food

Too time-stressed or lazy to forage? Why not get someone else to do the hard work? Here's a few places to buy mushrooms

Mrs Tee's Wild Mushrooms come fresh from the woodland in Hampshire

MORE PLACES TO BUY....

Explore FoodFinds for more places to buy mushrooms

Cook with wild mushrooms...

Chanterelle & Porcini Tart                     Cod baked with Wild Mushrooms

Braised Lamb with Morels & Madeira     Braised Pork with Wild Mushrooms

Wild Mushroom & Butterbean Soup       Wild Mushroom & Goats Cheese Frittata

COOK FROM THE BOOK

BUY Jane Grigson's The Mushroom Feast

BUY Mushroom by Johnny Acton & Nick Sandler

"When all's said and written, there's nothing better than field mushrooms that you have gathered yourself, on toast, for breakfast." Jane Grigson

Urban Foraging...
London - believe it or not - is a great place for foraging. When mushroom hunting, search by old oak, beech or silver birch trees or at the edges of woodland.


Recommended Urban Foraging Spots include...

Hampstead Heath
Epping Forest
Wimbledon Common
Walthamstow Marsh Nature Reserve

Remember to follow the FoodLovers Foraging Guidelines

Cut mushrooms at the base with a knife - don't rip them out off the ground
Leave some for other foragers - don't be greedy
Follow the countryside walking code - don't trample over wild plants
Carry a guide book with you - don't pick what you can’t easily identify
Mushrooms absorb all kinds of noxious pollutants - don’t pick near busy roads

For more on Grow Your Own, Keep Your Own and Make Your Own, visit Our Little Green Book of Home Grown Harvests

If you have any comments or tips on foraging, contact us

Nominate a foraging course, restaurant or place to buy wild food to be FoodLovers Approved

Want to know more about wild mushrooms...

If you are passionate about wild food, in particular wild mushrooms, and you want a good resource to help you with identifying wild mushrooms, try wildmushroomsonline

Here's how to get started...

Cep or Porcini

Porcini (Boletus edulis, the taxonomic name) is a highly regarded edible mushroom. It has a number of English names, including cep (from its Catalan name cep or its French name cèpe), king bolete and penny bun. A common term in current use is porcini. This mushroom has a distinct aroma reminiscent of fermented dough. The mushroom can grow singly or in clusters. Its habitat consists of areas dominated by oak, pine, spruce, and fir trees. Not limited to these locations, the King Bolete is also found in hardwood forests containing oaks. It fruits from summer to autumn.

The cap of this mushroom is convex, and 5–30 cm in diameter. At first, the cap is white then develops to mostly reddish-brown fading to white in areas near the margin; the colour continues to darken as it matures to a brown, smooth, moist, shining cap. The flesh is chalky white, often tinged with pink. Beneath is a spongy mass of vertical tubes, white at first, becoming yellowish-green, and eventually brown, in which the brown spores are produced. These pores do not stain when bruised. The stalk is stout, pale brown, with a fine network of raised, white veins towards the top and is 8–25 cm in height, and up to 7 cm thick, which is rather large in comparison to the cap. Fully mature specimens can weigh about 1 kg. However, the most appreciated by gourmets are the young small porcini, which are dense and tan to pale brown in colour, as the large ones often harbour insect larvae, and they become slimy, soft and less tasty with age. When you cut them lengthways - the insides remain white. The underside of the cap is always sponge-like on a cep.

Chefs consider porcini to be one of the finest-tasting wild mushrooms. For centuries Ancient Greeks and Romans thought them to be the best of all edible mushrooms and even today many famous chefs continue to believe this to be true. Porcini mushrooms lack aroma, but are well valued for their meaty texture, interesting flavour and distinguishing shape. The flavour is nutty, meaty, buttery, savoury, almost sweet, with a smooth, creamy texture. When fresh, porcini can be eaten and enjoyed raw as well as fried, sautéed with butter, ground into pasta, in risotto, in soups, and served with veal and game. They are a feature of many cuisines, including Provençal and Viennese. They can also be dried by stringing them separately on twine and hanging close to the ceiling of a kitchen for later use in casseroles and soups. Drying the porcini seems to accentuate its sweet and meaty overtones, reducing "l'eau du terre" (smell of the earth) that distinguishes fresh boletes. Once dry, they are best kept in an airtight container. Drying them in the oven is not advised as it can result in them being cooked and spoiling. When reconstituted, the liquid retrieved from soaking them makes a perfect soup base, needing almost no additions.

From wildmushroomsonline

Chanterelles

The golden chanterelle is one of the most recognized edible mushrooms, famous for its delicious and exquisite taste.

The golden chanterelle (C. cibarius) is common in woods in summer and autumn. Cantharellus is a mycorrhizal edible fungus, and forms symbiotic associations with hardwoods and conifer trees, where they tend to grow in the same spot year after year. The funnel-shaped cap is orange or yellow, but generally egg-yellow, with paler flesh and is quite meaty. It has forking gills on the underside, running all the way down its stalk, which tapers down seamlessly from the cap. The gills are interconnected and forked near the edge of the cap. Unlike most mushrooms with thin straight gills under the cap, the chanterelle has rounded, shallow and widely spaced ridges. The pale pinkish-buff spores are produced in narrow folds. It has a faint fragrant fruity smell reminiscent of apricots or peaches, and a mildly peppery taste, and is considered an excellent food mushroom. Its taste varies widely – from delicate to fairly intense.

Chefs love the chanterelle because of its cooking versatility. Chanterelles can be added as an ingredient to most dishes, and in general go well with eggs, curry, chicken, pork, fish, beef and veal, can be used as toppings on pizzas, be stewed, marinated, sautéed in olive oil, or used as filling for stuffed crêpes. Select specimens that have a fragrant odour, apricot colour, with no slimy, dark or decaying parts, and gills that are widely spaced. Chanterelles require cleaning before cooking because dirt tends to be found in the forked gills and crevices. It is best to use a soft toothbrush or nylon mushroom brush for cleaning. It may help to do so under slowly running water, but don’t soak them and be sure to drain well as the water will take away flavour. Once cleaned keep them in waxed paper or a paper bag in the refrigerator until cooking time. They can last 7-10 days in the refrigerator, although chanterelles are best eaten fresh

Chanterelles are rather firm-fleshed and meaty and therefore need cooking for longer than most mushrooms. The peppery taste combined with the meaty and chewy texture is ideal for cooking. Be sure to cook in large chunks to maximize flavour.

Don't pick... The False chanterelle (Hygrophoropsis aurantiaca) has finer, more orange gills and a darker cap. Although edible, it is a culinary disappointment.

The Jack O'Lantern mushroom (Omphalotus olearius) and its sister species (Omphalotus olivascens) are very similar in appearance to chanterelles and will make you very sick, although they are not lethal. Unlike chanterelles they have true gills (not forked or divided) that are thinner, have distinct crowns, and generally do not reach up to the edge. Additionally, the Jack-O-Lantern mushroom is bioluminescent and it tends to grow in clumps on trees – NOT under trees, like the chanterelle.

From wildmushroomsonline

Related Mushroom and Mushroom Foraging Sites

Foraging on Wikipedia
Find out everything you wanted to know about foraging!

Mushrooms on Wikipedia
Wiki's detailed look at mushrooms.

Wild Mushrooms Online
A great resource for detailed information on wild mushrooms.