Cooking

Raw: There is some debate about whether mushrooms are safe to eat raw, and a few wild mushrooms are known to cause stomach upsets; it is important to be very careful. However, many mushrooms are considered safe to eat raw, and perhaps a shame to miss out on. When young and raw, the bright orange and yellow, egg-like caesar mushrooms have the texture of edible velvet that melts in your mouth, the taste of chestnuts and the aroma of apricot. These mushrooms are highly coveted and therefore quite expensive, and for that reason we only produced one recipe for this book, but they are also good sprinkled raw into a finished pasta dish or grilled with olive oil. Good-quality raw ceps are also great finely sliced, which brings out their almost indescribable meat-like flavour, and cultivated button mushrooms have a distinct coconut flavour when raw, which is even stronger if the mushrooms are really fresh. And of course, the superstar of the wild mushroom world, the truffle, is usually grated and finely shaved raw onto food to give the optimum flavour. A classic grated raw mushroom salad dressed with white truffle oil is pretty hard to beat, if the mushrooms are as fresh as possible.