fungi foodie

Ever since moving to Berkeley in 2010 and starting to work in the redwoods near Marin county and Big Sur, I had been wanting to check out the big redwoods up north. In mid December my friend Claire and I took a trip up north to see the big redwoods in Del Norte and Humboldt counties. Claire is from Oregon so we drove up the 5 from Berkeley to Oregon and what drive up to Oregon is complete without checking out Weed, California?

The Weed Store in Weed, California

Wow which one of these delightful t-shirts should I buy for mom?

So after our brief stop in Weed, where surprisingly what I ended up buying was some beautiful artwork of a photo of Mt. Shasta, we continued to Oregon where we spent a lovely evening playing Cards Against Humanity with Claire’s family. The next day we checked out the redwoods Jedediah Smith Redwood State, which were stunning.

How beautiful and amazing are redwoods?

Claire next to a really big redwood

Claire and some cute decomposer fungi

I like to get into hollowed out redwoods

Yes, I really enjoy this :)

How adorable is this Hygrocybe?

and how cute are these Hypholomas?

Don’t eat these unless you want to be vomiting all night, but how gorgeous is an Amanita muscaria?

We had an excellent day hiking around in Jedediah. The redwoods up that far north in Del Norte County in California are absolutely unparalleled. Next we continued down the coast to Humboldt county, and what trip to Humboldt is complete without a visit to the Lost Coast Brewery?

Enjoying the beer flight at the Lost Coast brewery

Thanks to some tips from my mycology buddy Jessie Uehling, we discovered an epically beautiful and legal place to mushroom hunt in Humboldt!

The light through these conifers was just too much – I didn’t want to leave!

If you didn’t like mushrooms before, I bet you can’t deny how charming these Laccarias are, right?

Bet you didn’t know that mushrooms came shaped like corals? These clavulinas are so pretty.

Mushroom selfie!!

and finally ! the mother lode! Winter chanterelles!

posing with my finds :)

Ooh what’s that there hiding in the mud/grass?

Is it a giant Hydnum repandum??

Let’s check underneath to make sure – yes, I see teeth – yes, mushrooms have teeth sometimes, how cool is that?

So super excited to be coming home with chanterelles (Cantharellus) and hedgehog mushrooms (Hydnum) we returned to Berkeley with our treasures in tow.

Here are the 2 species of chanterelles and 2 species of hedgehog mushrooms after I washed and cut them. It was a little extra work washing and removing all the leaves and duff, but totally worth it :)

wild mushrooms collected from the redwood forests: two species of chanterelles and two species of hedgehogs

My first ever risotto – wild mushrooms with onions, herbs, and parmesan – super tasty!

wild mushroom risotto with onions, parmesan, and foraged mushrooms

On Tuesday February 4, 2014, I made a dish from Jerusalem with my friend Valerie, who is nurse in San Francisco. Valerie and I met when we were 10 at jewish sleep away camp and have been friends for close to 2 decades now! It’s really nice to have an old friend around in the bay area:)

So we made conchiglie with yogurt, peas & chile from Jerusalem by Yotam Ottoleghi and Sami Tamimi pg. 111. This recipe is nice compared to other recipes in this book in that it has fewer ingredients and they are a bit easier to source.

All of the ingredients for conchiglie with yogurt, peas & chile

One tip though if you buy frozen peas – this should be a no brainer but of course I bought all of my ingredients right before cooking and didn’t take the time to do this – let your peas thaw before you start cooking. As a graduate student I’m a bit lacking on the cooking supplies side, so I also do not have a food processor. No fear, my handy immersion blender did the trick! If you are going to buy one appliance – I highly recommend the immersion blender. They don’t take up a lot of space and have many handy attachments and can pretty much replace a blender or a food processor in your life. I imagine a blender would also work fine for this recipe. I used 0% Fage greek yogurt here and it worked out well.

blending together the greek yogurt and peas for the sauce with my handy immersion blender

This recipe is nice because it is rich and creamy but doesn’t leave you feeling heavy – the greek yogurt is creamy but light and is filled with protein and calcium so is actually good for you. I also learned that I really need to buy or acquire a larger pot! Making 500g of pasta at once is tricky! I couldn’t find anything labeled conchiglie at Safeway, so I used Barilla big shells. They were large though and I had to cook the pasta in two batches. I also could not find Turkish chile so I just used regular red pepper flakes, and I used less feta because 8 oz seemed like a ton of feta for me! The sauteed pine nuts and chile really made the dish for me. It was really great to get that extra flavor and crunch. In the future I would probably use 1-2 cloves of garlic instead of 4, and I might add spinach or more peas to give it a bit higher vegetable to sauce ratio. My picture of course did not come out as lovely as in the book, but we enjoyed it nonetheless :) The recipe saved well and gave me several lunches throughout the week!

The world is your oyster mushroom!

trip to the redwoods followed by a wild mushroom feast!

Conchiglie with yogurt, peas, & chile