Winter Fungi
By Daniel Butler, author and forager
As we reach late autumn and temperatures start to dip, the peak of the fungal season is now behind us. As mentioned in my last blog, this year has proved to be a damp squib in general, but this doesn’t mean all is lost.
Winter is fast-approaching, but the mushrooms haven’t finished
(Photo: author’s own)
Several delicious species positively relish colder weather and are prompted into fruiting by the first frosts which herald the approaching winter. These should be just starting to appear and can add greatly to winter stews and pies.
November wood blewits on a Welsh mountaintop
(Photo: author’s own)
For many years my favourite cold weather mushrooms were the blewits: Lepista nuda, L. saeva and L. sordida. The first of these, the wood blewit, is most common in my part of Mid-Wales. As its name suggests, it is generally found in woodland or its ‘bonsai habitat version’ of hedge bottoms. This is by no means always the case, however, and my best patches are actually on the hilltop behind my house, some 3 – 400m from the nearest tree.
December field blewits (pied bleu) growing in an Oxfordshire ridge and furrow field
(Photo: author’s own)
Its close relative, the field blewit (L. saeva), is not particularly frequent here, but is fairly abundant in the dwindling amount of unimproved pasture around my childhood North Oxfordshire haunts. These are just as tasty as their woodland cousin and are virtually the only British wild mushroom to have been collected commercially: they were widely collected in the East Midlands to be sold on market stalls as ‘blue legs’. They are also notable for being capable of cultivation – being grown extensively in limestone caves along the Loire Valley and are sometimes on sale in Britain as ‘pied bleu’ or just ‘blewits’. I would avoid these: they are over-priced and have none of the flavour punch of the wild versions.
Winter chanterelles are difficult to find, but tend to grow in large numbers
(Photo: author’s own)
My culinary love affair with blewits has dwindled over the past decade, however, having been elbowed out of gastronomic first place by trumpet – or winter – chanterelles. These are difficult to find thanks to their superb camouflage, but they are well worth finding for they taste fantastic. Interestingly, if you buy ‘chanterelles’ in France it is these you will be sold – the yellow flutes that we know by the same name are generally called ‘girolles’ on the other side of the Channel. I once did a wild mushroom blind tasting, pitting various late autumn mushrooms against each other and most people ranked winter chanterelles above their better-known namesake.
Velvet shanks grow in mid-winter
(Photo: author’s own)
The final cold-weather mushroom worthy of comment is the velvet shank (Flammulina velutipes). This grows on dead and dying wood and, like the field blewit, has a history of cultivation in the Far East where it is grown in the dark and sold in clumps of little while spindles as enoki. Yet again the cultivated version is a pale imitation of the wild species – used more for appearance and texture than flavour.