Wild mushroom season in Paris

I'm what you call a fungophile: I'm crazy about wild mushrooms. I'm not sure how I got to be this way, as most Americans tend decidedly toward the English fungophobic tradition. I think it had to do with my Swiss mother and grandmother, who instilled at least in my imagination a love for the wild edible fungus. My Indiana childhood was filled with mostly fruitless searches for morels, those pale gray, blackish, or tan, spongiform mushrooms that appear in midspring before a lucky few seekers in northern American woodlands. Morels have an innately evil capacity for camouflage and downright subterfuge, often being entirely capped by hummocks of last fall's dry leaves. In their elusiveness, they're for me the Bin Laden of mushrooms. I've never found more than a handful.

On or after our fruitless forays, my mother would invariably recount tales of the fabled chanterelle--or egg mushroom--of her childhood in Switzerland. How she raved about its delectable flavor! I was never clear whether it was called "egg mushroom" because of its bright egg-yolk color or because it was so delicious with scrambled eggs. It grew under pine trees, she said. Great! There were practically no pine forests in Indiana.

I remember the summer I became a stark raving fungophile, the rainiest summer in anyone's memory. An impromptu July hike in a southern Indiana woodland turned into a foray in fungal wonderland. In the sepulchral gloom under mature hardwoods and a sky heavy with impending thunderstorms, mushrooms gleamed like mysterious jewels all over the forest floor. Brown and yellow boletes--with tubes instead of gills (I knew that much) were scattered among ghostly white or pale yellow, ringed mushrooms that I was pretty sure were powerfully poisonous amanitas.

But most exciting, I struck what I was pretty sure was gold: rivulets of funnel-form, egg-yolk yellow mushrooms with delicate, ridge-like gills scrolled partway down their stems, which gave off a distinct apricot aroma the moment they were plucked. With their almost phosphorescent golden color, these were my kind of mushrooms. Unlike the deceptive morel, this was a mushroom you could spot a mile away!

Having returned to my car for a basket as soon as I had poked my head into the woods, I now filled it with what I was pretty sure were the fabled chanterelles (which I found growing under beeches, not pines) and a selection of the boletes, many of which I suspected might be edible. Loading the basket and my soggy, muddy self into the car, I sped on southward toward my alma mater, Indiana University, on a hunch that I might catch my old mycologist prof, Dr. Mike Tansy, in his office. If there was anyone who could identify my specimens in a hurry, it would be he. I did, and he did, and they were...chanterelles.

I lived through many more summers of chanterelle hunting in Indiana--more or less fruitful, depending on rainfall patterns--before moving to Paris. I'm sure that the fact that I saw heaps of cepes (porcini or the king bolete) in the markets the first time I visited here in late August was instrumental in germinating the idea in my brain of actually moving here. Because for me, cepes--with their powerfully woodsy aroma and meaty texture--are the monarchs of the fungal kingdom. They send me into culinary and gustatory ecstasy...and they don't grow in Indiana.

In France, the autumnal wild mushroom season opens with the appearance of the first cepes in August, continues with girolles, which are chanterelles in American, chanterelles, which in France are a smaller (and cheaper), brown-capped member of the genus Cantharellus, and the sinister-looking trompettes de la mort or trumpets of death, another chanterelle relative which is coal black. Scattered here and there are pieds de mouton (sheepsfoot mushrooms), pieds bleu (bluefeet)--an elegant fungus with a blue stem and a smooth creamy gray cap but a pretty insipid taste, lobster mushrooms, oysters, and others.

Of course, that famous queen of the mushrooms--the truffle (black in the case of the French species) tops off the season in late autumn and early winter. With its rough skin that must be peeled, gnarly form, hard, crisp texture, and that famously powerful but ephemeral perfume, the truffle for me is more of a precious seasoning than a real mushroom.

Where do all these fungi come from? They are hunted down in the forests throughout France by professionals who then send them into the wholesale produce markets just like any other vegetable. Their sheer quantity is mind-boggling. It takes a lot of mushrooms to satisfy the seasonal gluttony of the fungophilic French. And just how are accidental poisonings averted, the American is sure to ask?

This being France, there's a bureaucracy in place for that very purpose: a network of official inspectors. But any old humble amateur mushroom hunter in France can be assured of never biting down on a poisonous fungus. All you need to do is take your basket of booty into the nearest pharmacy (and there are approximately 3 pharmacies per block in Paris). All pharmacists are required to study mushroom taxonomy as part of their formal training, and will helpfully--and for free--identify your finds, often with the aid of an instructive, official chart picturing the poisonous species for the edification of the fungus-drunk public.

And what of my own mushroom collecting since I've come to France? I have to admit that most of that I've done merely by sauntering through the markets. And while this is a delight, it can't compare to the thrill of the hunt. Not to mention that it's very hard on the pocketbook, with the choicest cepes tipping in at around 150FF per kilo (around $10 per pound) even at the height of the season.

In a curious aside, the common button mushroom, a strain of Agaricus campestris or meadow mushroom, is known as the champignon de Paris here. Ironically, I found this very mushroom--actually, several clumps of it--sprouting resolutely between stones and cobbles in a tree well along the Avenue de Villiers not far from my house here in the 17th arrondissement. Now that's the true champignon de Paris!

My forays into the forest nearest our house in Normandy yielded only a disappointing array of mushroom stumps. Yep, someone had been there before me. Judging from the numbers of cars parked alongside forest roads in the fall, I've become keenly aware that in France--unlike in the fungophobe Midwest, where my parents were the only ones to raid my patch--I have keen competition. But if you can't beat 'em, join 'em. This week I've just sent off my dues to the Societe Mycologique de France, which will entitle me to go on official forays with generous-spirited French fungophiles who hopefully will share their expertise with the eager American in their midst. For in mushroom hunting--as in most expatriate experiences--you must depend on the kindness of strangers.

Share