Wild Mushrooms

Appears in

The Gate Vegetarian Cookbook: Where Asia meets the Mediterranean

Published 2004

About

For the vegetarian cook, mushrooms are among the most versatile of foods and the most potent of flavourings. Since our early days, catering for music festivals in the countryside, we have celebrated this amazingly useful “food for free”, and have both since become keen amateur mycologists.

We go foraging for mushrooms whenever we get the chance, whether it is in Epping Forest (or even Hyde Park) or further afield. Adrian even has his own secret spot in the Scottish Highlands that he disappears to in late summer to gather an abundance of chanterelles, ceps and hedgehogs, as well as slippery jacks, the local speciality. On one of those trips, he and his good friend Andressa found a grifla frondosa – or hen of the woods the size of a football, and they still argue over who spotted it first.