In Season: Chanterelles and other wild mushrooms

Many years ago, I knew the composer John Cage. Besides re-inventing music by encouraging people to listen to the sounds of silence and thereby hearing the music of the world, he loved to hunt mushrooms, often eating ones he didn't know and thereby putting himself in the hospital. It's a miracle he didn't kill himself.

So here we are in the middle of wild mushroom season. If you want to wild-craft mushrooms, don't be like John Cage. Here's my personal rule: only eat those that you would feed to your kids. I have eaten - and fed to my kids - chanterelles, oyster mushrooms, puffballs and black trumpets, but that's it. I love porcinis, but I'm not quite sure about the safety of porcini lookalikes that pop up in the wild, so I pass that species by.

Hunting wild mushrooms is great fun, if for no other reasons than it gets you tramping around the woods and meadows of our beautiful county. Most people don't know it, but Sonoma County has been a national leader in the development of raising wild mushrooms in captivity, so to speak, that is, in mushroom sheds. Gourmet Mushrooms Inc. of Sebastopol was founded in 1977, when just about the only farmed “wild” mushroom available was the shiitake.

Since then, Gourmet Mushrooms has developed indoor cultivation methods for many former wildings, such as Maitake frondosa, known commonly as “hen of the woods.” It not only tastes great but is a prized component of Chinese medicine for boosting the immune system.

Many of our most delicious mushrooms are mycorrhizal fungi that form symbiotic associations with plants. The plants exude a sweet, sticky substance from their roots on which the fungus feeds.

In return, the fungus grows long, thread-like structures called hyphae that reach far into the soil and scavenge nutrients, particularly the scarce element phosphorus, and feed them back to the host plant.

When the mushroom gets a notion to reproduce, it sends up fruiting bodies that produce spores. It is the young fruiting bodies that we recognize as mushrooms and eat with such delight.

But you don't have to be a wild mushroom hunter to enjoy the umami flavors, earthy fragrances and health benefits of wild mushrooms. Chanterelles are among several in our markets now, mostly gathered by foragers who sell them to retailers.

Their season will soon be over, though, and they won't be available again until July. The best way to enjoy their flavors and fine fruity aroma is to make them into a soup, as their flavor compounds are fat soluble and dissolve in butter.

___

A fragrant and hearty soup that's just the item to warm you up on cold winter days.

Chanterelle Mushroom Soup

Makes 4-6 bowls or about two quarts.

1 pound chanterelle mushrooms

1½ quarts chicken broth

4 tablespoons butter, divided into four equal pieces

1 cup thinly sliced shallots

2 tablespoons minced shallots

3 cloves garlic, thinly sliced

1 tablespoon all-purpose flour

1 cup white wine

2 bay leaves

6 thyme sprigs

½ teaspoon thyme leaves

- Kosher salt and fresh ground black pepper to taste

Clean the mushrooms and trim their ends. Place trimmings in a medium saucepan. Add chicken stock and bring to a boil, then reduce to lowest heat.

Melt two tablespoons of the butter in a medium saucepan over medium heat. Add thinly-sliced shallots and garlic and saute, stirring frequently, until very soft but not browned, about 6-7 minutes. Add the mushrooms to the pot and cook, stirring frequently, until the mushrooms give up their juice and start to sizzle, about 8-9 minutes.

Stir in the flour and cook for half a minute. Add wine and cook, stirring constantly and scraping the bottom of the pan, until syrupy, about one minute. Place a fine mesh strainer over the soup and pour the chicken broth through it. Discard mushroom trimmings.

Tie up the bay leaves and thyme sprigs in a small single layer cheesecloth bag, or simply tie them into a packet with butcher string. Add the bag or packet to the soup and bring up the heat to a barely-bubbling simmer. Let the soup simmer for 30 minutes.

Discard bay leaves and thyme and transfer the soup to a blender. Blend on low speed and slowly blend faster. Once blender is at full speed, add two tablespoons butter, one tablespoon at a time, until fully incorporated.

Continue blending until completely smooth. Rinse out pot and pour soup back into it through a fine mesh strainer. Adjust salt and pepper if necessary.

To serve, stir in the minced shallots and thyme leaves. Bring up the heat until the soup is hot, ladle into warmed bowls, and serve immediately.