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I started out as a small child. Eventually I grew, all the while experiencing things. Lucky for me I experienced some stuff that led me to seek more experiences, which ultimately resulted in a wider perspective than I had previously attained. The wider my perspective gets, the less I have to worry about falling off the edge of it. So far it's working out pretty well, so I think I'll keep it up for a while.

Saturday, June 11, 2011

The varieties of FLAVOR

To begin with, the distinction between plant and fungus wasn't firmly established or recognized in the world of biology until some time in the 1960s. Botanists must have been relieved that they would no longer have to share space at botanical conventions with mushroom weirdos with the announcement of a 3rd kingdom of life (with two more being discovered/differentiated later). This is perfectly acceptable because I think botanists should not have to describe things that exhale CO2 and inhale O2. It must have been terribly confusing dealing with these enzymatically and ecologically inverse plants that don't look like any other type of plant and only share non-photosynthesis with a minority of other very not-mushroomy plants. And now, mushroom people have our very own science, MYCOLOGY, the study of fungi.

One of the things that continues to motivate me to seek out different types of mushrooms, besides the obvious things that cause anyone to seek out new experiences, is the extreme variety of flavor one may experience. Flavor is not really the most obvious motivator, even to the hungry, experimental, or the fond-of-mushrooms-you-buy-at-the-store. It actually never occurred to me until I first decided to step out of the cultural superstitions and fears surrounding mushrooms and the feeling of fearing for my life that so many people take advantage of in order to promote a cultural belief, that I tasted a morel I had found and which my companion had helped me identify. I realized that even though I could detect a slight analogousness between the morel flavor and the well-known Agaricus Bisporus flavor, the flavor of the morel was actually more similar to something like steak (yes, cow meat). And once the initial flavor assumption I had going into the kingdom of fungi was overturned by the evidence presented by the morel, infinity sprang up before me. There is an infinite spectrum of flavor possible with the kingdom of the fungus, just as there is with herbs/veggies/fruits/grains (plants) and with ruminants/omnivores/avians/mammals/reptiles (animals). There is equally a third set of possibilities and I love cooking.

If you have not hunted wild mushrooms then you have probably still experienced a diverse range of flavors from the fungi. Bread comes to mind - the yeast really doesn't get to ferment the flour for very long, but you can't deny the difference in flavor between a sourdough bread and an unleavened bread such as a tortilla. Yeast is a fungus, yeast is the only major difference between different types of bread, and they all taste pretty different from one another. So a fungus is what's causing your favorite bread to be your favorite bread, unless there's some other reason you love it such as its being full of cranberries or something. Soy sauce tastes wildly different from tofu, yet they are both made of the same thing: soy. Difference? The fermentation process using yeast yields soy sauce. Beer and wine are other obvious fermentation products. More obvious still are the flavors of Brie (I always eat the rind, that's where the flavor's concentrated at!) and various Bleu cheeses. These cheeses derive their simultaneously delicate and extremely powerful flavors from delicious species of mold. The penicillium species that dwells in a cave in Stilton, UK has a particularly awesome flavor, as does penicillium roquefortii.

Popular edible mushrooms all have fairly different flavors from one another, though there is an underlying flavor that seems unique to the fungus kingdom and appears in every different fungus I have tasted to some degree or other, with the notable exceptions being the moldy cheeses. This is probably the flavor of chitin, the fundamental material which all fungi are made of (in plants this is cellulose).

Some popular edibles with unique flavors include of course the morel (Morchella spp) with a distinctive savory (Umami) flavor which definitely makes me think of "little steaks growing from the ground", the chanterelle (Cantharellus and Craterellus spp with some others included sometimes due to superficial resemblance) whose flavors within the group are fairly different, with the yellow chanterelles being fruity (it takes quite a lot of them in your mouth at once before you taste any mushroominess), the red variety being more floral and spicy, the black trumpets being more similar to morels but tasting somewhat like a combination of morel and yellow chanterelle, and other varieties I've not found yet probably tasting different; curiously there exists a type of tooth fungus (with the spatially opposite design of the polypore or bolete, that being stalactites of spore-producing flesh in the place of gills) called a Hedgehog Mushroom which appears to have some very close evolutionary ties to the yellow chanterelle, as the color is identical (not hard to imagine the same chemical compound might be responsible for the yellow color of both), and the flavor is practically identical, though much more concentrated in the hedgehog than in the yellow chanterelle leading me to believe that the same chemical compound (or complex of compounds) is likely responsible for the flavor of both, especially considering the numerous substantial similarities.

Most varieties of the yellow chanterelle seem to me (personal opinion) to be improvements on the original design. The white chanterelle has a similar appearance only it seems to have diverted its energy from making yellow pigment into making stronger flavor. The yellow trumpet has the appearance of chanterelle in color and the structure of a black trumpet only sometimes it's filled in (making a solid vase) and sometimes it's not (making a hollow trumpet), and it pretty much tastes like a yellow chanterelle with bits of black trumpet in it. The bog chanterelles (yellow and tiny with more of a long-skinny stalk) are the only member of the chanterelle family I enjoy less than the yellow chanterelle that characterizes the family. Also, even though it's not really all the way a chanterelle per se, the yellow hedgehog mushroom (mentioned above) is probably the best of the mushrooms that have the exact same pigment and flavor as the yellow chanterelle, as it is much more concentrated and the texture is more firm, almost crunchy. There's my $0.02 on the matter.

Boletus Edulis, the King Bolete, has something similar going on with there being clearly a set of compounds responsible for the flavor that each fruiting body is only allowed so much of throughout its life, as the smaller/less mature ones seem to have much more concentrated flavor than the larger/more mature ones, and this flavor is definitely something to remember and to develop skills looking in shrumps and identifying mushrooms just to be able to continue to occasionally experience. It is another extremely savory mushroom. The extraneous but healthy pieces of King Bolete you inevitably generate in preparing one for a meal (or several, on a good day) can be used to create a broth that tastes somewhere between chicken and beef broth.

Oyster mushrooms (pleurotus spp) are a unique form, in that the very recognizable gill information matrix appears without stalk and growing from dead trees. This was the first type of mushroom I positively identified myself without anyone else telling me what it was or how to identify it, so really I could say it was the first mushroom I learned, although I fairly well understood the morel after my companion-for-life identified the ones I had found earlier the same year. The flavor is definitely somewhere between mushroom and white-fleshed fish of some sort. The flavors found in the Agaricus genus are actually a surprising trend. More frequently than you find flavors akin to the grocery store mushroom AKA the portabella button, you find almond flavored mushrooms. And it is indeed the same chemical that occurs in the highest concentration in almond oil, benzaldehyde, which is responsible for the flavor of the "almond mushrooms" such as Agaricus Subrufescens (almond mushroom), Agaricus Arvensis (horse mushroom), and Agaricus Augustus (the prince). There are probably other chemicals in these mushrooms responsible for their unique flavor, but that is one I specifically know about, and definitely is responsible at least for the almond aspect of their flavor.

Also something I am able to cross-reference between plants, chemistry, and fungi, are the Candy Cap, Lactarius Fragilis. Fenugreek, maple syrup, tobacco, and various candy caps (there are 3 species of lactarius with this compound in them) all contain Sotolon, a flavor molecule which has different aromas in different concentrations (that of maple syrup or caramel at low concentrations, and that of fenugreek/curry/spicy at high concentrations). There has been no specific scientific study that shows the presence of sotolon in L.fragilis, however these aroma characteristics are consistent - the fresh mushroom smells spicy while the dried mushroom smells like maple syrup. Also the characteristic of sotolon to pass through the body unchanged, leading to maple-syrup-scented sweat glands (armpits mostly) is a well known response to eating lots of fenugreek and it is also a well known response to eating lots of candy cap cookies. This is a mushroom which is treated as a spice, rather than a culinary side dish or main dish. Adding the dried and rehydrated mushrooms to a sugar cookie recipe produces maple-syrup-flavored cookies that are awesome and have mushrooms in them. I have collected (tediously, as the mushrooms are small and do not add up quickly to enough to make a batch of cookies) this mushroom...and yeah, those are some awesome cookies. Sometimes I want to make maple syrup cookies but it wouldn't be the same. They do make an awesome intro to your friends about why they should consider your mushroom hunting to be not something to fear for your life over, but something to consider as a wonderful culinarily relevant excuse to walk around in the woods, when undertaken with solid identification method and hopefully with a little guidance from experienced hunters.

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