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Of polyspores, grubs and lichens

Going wild with mushroom expert Alan MuskatB Y M A C K E N S Y L U N S F O R D

Mushroom hunter Alan Muskat gets up close and personal with his wild prey.

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Anyone with enough money canpurchase a fancy plate of food, butit takes real moxie to go back topre-agrarian practices and eatstu! right o! the ground.

Alan Muskat, professional mushroom gath-erer and wild foods expert, among other things,is one such daring soul. One might not call hima foodie, per se, but Muskat has the foragingthing down pat. While he doesn’t have sorbetin his freezer, a jar of ants sits alongside an icecube tray filled with honey-locust puree. Jars ofdried lichens and hen-of-the-woods mush-rooms rest on a bookshelf bordering hiskitchen. He mentions that there’s high meat inthe basement—meat “put up” to age enough sothat it begins to host scores of reportedly bene-ficial bacteria as he o!ers up a glass of slightlyfermented mushroom ink to sip.

It’s all rather wild. “But I’m wild on a practical level,” says

Muskat, who’s busy in his kitchen sautéing afew mushrooms he gathered and dried last fallin a pat of raw butter, churned by a cow-own-ing friend.

Muskat grew up in Miami and didn’t setfoot in the woods until he was of college age.The way Muskat explains it, wild blueberrieswere his gateway food—he discovered themalong the Appalachian Trail in New Jersey.

“It was amazing,” he says. “You could pickyour food!”

He le" behind his rather prudish life as aPrinceton student to join a co-op, and beforeanyone knew what was happening, Muskatwas part of an Audubon expedition, living ona bus for a month to learn the ropes of environ-mental education. A"er graduating, he took aquick foray to Portland—where his enthusiasmfor wild mushrooms developed in earnest—then landed in Asheville, where he’s lived forthe past 15 years. Within a year of moving to theWestern North Carolina city, Muskat mademushrooming into a full-time job.

He teaches people how to gather mushroomsand cook them. His ever-growing reputation asa knowledgeable and very quirky character hasenabled him to lead groups of well-heeled food-ies scratching around in the dirt for wild foods.

All this summer, Muskat’s hosting retreat-likeforaging expeditions at the Laughing Frog Es-tate in Walnut, N.C., featuring well-knownWNC chefs cooking what is gathered on theproperty in the evening. “No Taste Like Home,”Muskat’s series, is an authentic foodie experi-ence, with just enough pampering to make a$125 price tag for foraging (accommodations notincluded) go unquestioned. Muskat calls it asort of “Iron Chef Appalachia,” and has cra"eda press release peppered with jokes about how

the dinner could conceivably kill his guests. “It’ll be like a wedding,” says Muskat. “Until

death do us part.”The joking is all in good fun—and all part of

Muskat’s e!orts to entertain himself and thosearound him while keeping all parties involvedaware of their own mortality. It’s a good way tokeep things fresh.

“There’s always been a tension for me, be-tween it as a lifestyle and a way to makemoney,” he says of his wild foods fetish.

Muskat formerly spent much of his timeforaging for mushrooms that were then soldto local restaurants. One of his chief clientsused to snatch up everything he gathered, butthen learned to gather mushrooms underMuskat’s tutelage.

“Now they don’t need me anymore,” hesays—though it’s clear there’s no love lost.

The demand for foraged mushrooms hascome about largely due to diners’ increasingculinary curiosity and the culinarycognoscenti’s movement past overwrought, fu-sion-filled presentations to hyper-local ingredi-ents. And that’s where foraging comes in. Sure,the chefs that are fussing around with prissypresentations may be garnering attention. Butwhen it comes down to it, culinary figures likeAnthony Bourdain, who travels the world sam-pling grubs in Ghana and scorpions in the mar-kets of Vietnam, are wielding more influencebecause they’re taking the culinary experienceto the next level.

Last August, Muskat pitched the idea of awild foods show to Erika Dobrin of GoodbyePictures who was in Asheville filming “Austinand Santino,” a sequel to “Project Runway.”The Asheville Chamber of Commerce had

connected Dobrin with Muskat so that hecould help her find interesting locations for thefashion show. Dobrin bit at the idea but envi-sioned a more travel-oriented concept.

“She was proposing far-flung settings for theshow,” Muskat says. “I, on the other hand,wanted it to be in Asheville, or at least south-east-based, so I gave her a couple of way-out,yet local, examples.”

Muskat had no intention of becoming an-other Andrew Zimmern, host of The TravelChannel’s show Bizarre Foods, and traveling tofar o! places to eat fermented things and makefaces at the camera.

“That’s the tension with TV,” says Muskat.“They want to make it exotic, and I want tomake it your backyard—which is boring topeople that just want to be entertained.”

Muskat had his own experience with Zim-mern when he took the chef-turned-TV starto the Biltmore Estate woods for a little forag-ing trip.

“It was only because I knew a gardener therewho had scouted it for me, and I urged [Zim-mern] not to reveal that [the Biltmore Estate]was where we were,” he says. “It would makeit seem like you’d have to go to a special placelike that to do what I do. But he couldn’t resist.He wasn’t about making it accessible.”

While exotic and edgy does sell, Muskatlives the locavore movement to the fullest as ageneral rule of thumb. His refrigerator contentsmight even make Zimmern blush, what with itsjars of organs from locally raised farm animals.There’s lamb heart, tongue and liver alongsidea jar of local cream so thick it looks like yogurt.And there are mushrooms everywhere—dried,frozen and turned into stock with a little sea-weed thrown in for extra umami, or savoriness,one of the five basic tastes together with sweet,sour, bitter, and salty.

None of the five basic tastes exactly cameinto play, though, when Muskat began hismushrooming expeditions.

“The first mushroom that I positively identi-fied was Russula Emetica. Do you know whatan emetic is? It’s the medical term for some-thing you eat if you want to throw up,” he says.

Muskat only (wisely, he adds), nibbled at thesomewhat toxic mushroom, chalking it up topart of the learning process.

“My mouth started burning, like if you puthot sauce in your mouth. But more like batteryacid. The funny thing is that I was hooked a"erthat,” he says.

Swallowing a piece of a deadly mushroomcould kill a person if he or she does not receivethe proper medical treatment, says Muskat,though even the deadliest mushroom can atleast be tasted without risking certain death.

But when it comesdown to it, culinary

figures like AnthonyBourdain, who travels theworld sampling grubs in

Ghana and scorpions in themarkets of Vietnam, arewielding more influencebecause they’re taking

the culinary experience tothe next level.

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Muskat recommends that ‘shroom newbieslearn the ropes from hands-on experience, super-vised by a human guide and not a book. In fact,he recommends a human teacher so highly that,when people ask him which field guide books toreference, his answer is “none.”

“The smartass answer is ‘this is not a fieldguide,’” he says, picking up a tattered mushroomhandbook from his bookshelf and flinging it to thefloor. “Okay! Guide me!” he shouts to the book.Not surprisingly, it doesn’t respond. Muskat,hands on hips, nods, his rather odd point con-firmed. “A field guide is a human being. It’s Saca-gawea.” He points at the hardcover on the floor.“This is a book.”

Once out in the still mostly dormant woods,Muskat continues to reiterate that the most im-portant thing to remember when gathering mush-rooms is to “bring a friend who knows whatthey’re doing.”

“There’s this mindset that people have whenthey want to do something that they’ll just buy abook and do it on their own,” he says. “There’snothing alternative about doing it yourself.American individualism was designed for corpo-rations to sell you books.” With that, Muskat,who’s written a few mushroom books himself,turns and crunches o! through the dry leaf-cov-ered floor of the forest.

Another tip? Don’t always watch the ground,he says, right a"er he points out a few signs of lifepoking through the leaves: wild onion grass.

“I tell people they’ll miss the forest for the fungusif all they do is look down,” he says. “But it’s true,”he admits, stopping for a moment to toe the driedleaves away from the base of a lichen-covered treestump. “Most mushrooms do come out of the

ground. Some come out of trees, but generallythey’ll come out within five feet of the ground.”

He snaps a piece of dry lichen o! of the trunk.“Lichen is a fungus—it’s a mushroom with algaeon it,” he says, tossing it into the trees.

It’s too early in the season for much more to begrowing, Muskat says. “The season is generallyJune through September, October. Except formorels, which are late April and early May.”

Another cardinal rule of gathering mushrooms?“No rain no mushrooms. That’s an Africanproverb,” he says. “I think it’s taken generally tomean, if you have all sunny days in your life, thenyou don’t gain the benefit of su!ering.”

At that, Muskat leans over and plucks a huge,partially rotted mushroom the size of his head,dotted with a grub or two. “This is what they calla loathsome mass of putrescence,” says Muskat,allowing a little giggle to escape. “This was verylikely a cracked-cap polypore. This is related toone of the top medicinals,” he says, taking a quickwhi!. “The Chinese version of Phellinus, but noone uses it here. You have to be careful, becauseit grows on a poisonous tree. I’m tempted to eatit and see what happens.”

He breaks it in half, revealing more grubs. “Somewhere I heard that no grubs are poison-

ous. If I could find that out for sure, I would eatthem,” he says, poking his index finger into themushroom’s gills.

It’s this sort of scene that inspires a gut reac-tion of fear in some when it comes to wild-gath-ered mushrooms.

“We associate mushrooms with death, andthat’s part of the mycophobia,” Muskat says. “Iguess the question is, where do you draw the linebetween death and rebirth? The tree is dying, the

Cooking tipsfor mushrooms

The Tao Te Ching says that ruling alarge empire is like cooking a smallfish. The same goes for mushrooms.You’ll need a careful hand and a cutelittle pan, because with only one ortwo mushrooms in it, it’s easy to addtoo much oil, salt or flame.

Heat the oil first (so themushrooms don’t just soak it up). Irecommend olive, coconut or palm.Then add the mushrooms and salt.Toss the contents to spread the oiland salt evenly. Softer mushrooms arelike pancakes, however; you don’twant to fuss with them too much,especially at first. (I also recommendtaking the time to slice them thinly).

Cook these for a while; the amountof heat and time depends on themushroom. The salt will help themushrooms lose their water. Coveringthe pan will help retain this moisture,which will steam the mushrooms andcook them more thoroughly withoutthe need for extra water. If you do findthat the mushrooms are browningmore than you want, you can add asplash of water, wine or Pabst BlueRibbon and re-cover. This will speedup the cooking process.

I find that things taste better theless water you use. Softer mushroomssoak up water and get mushy, whileothers can handle it. In fact, someneed a little added moisture if youdon’t use much oil and they’re a littledried out to begin with. Othermushrooms, like chanterelles, mayrelease too much water. You canuncover the pan to evaporate it, pourit off and use it for stock or addsomething like cornstarch to thicken it(try Irish moss, a seaweed, or driedsassafras leaves, the fîlé in gumbo).But either way, you’ll probably want tocook that water off so you can getyour mushrooms to brown slightly.

... Also, wet mushrooms don’tbrown: caramelization occurs at 320degrees F, and as long water issteaming out of mushrooms, theirsurface temperature is not going to bemuch higher than 212 degrees.

Muskat’s mushroom-cookingtechniques (Wild Mushrooms: A Tasteof Enchantment, Alan Muskat, 2007)

Damp weather makes for good mushrooming.

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mushroom is living, then the mushroom is na-ture’s recycling system. If it’s a circle, wheredoes the circle start and stop, you know?”

There has always been quite a bit of super-stition and fear surrounding mushrooms, saysMuskat. “They seem to grow out of nowhereand grow rather quickly,” says Muskat. To thatend, he says, they were associated with light-ning strikes—the trees would burn a!er light-

ning hit them and the mushrooms would springout of the rotting trees. “It seems rather silly tous now that they wouldn’t get that mushroomsgrow from spores,” Muskat says.

Muskat looks down near his feet, where hehas just noticed the droppings of a forest crea-ture, studded with large seeds. “Someone’sbeen eating persimmons,” he says, harvestingthe seeds and o"ering them on his upturned

palm. “Take these home, roast them, then putthem in your co"ee machine and make co"eeout of it. Once you roast it at 275 degrees, youcan’t get any disease.”

That, Andrew Zimmern, is a bizarre food, in-deed—and straight out of Muskat’s backyard.

For more information about Alan Muskatand his guided mushroom foraging expedi-tions, visit alanmuskat.com.

Wild mushrooms on the menuNot in the mood to cook your own mushrooms? These Asheville, N.C., restaurants often carry wild-gathered mushrooms (based upon availability):

The Admiraltheadmiralnc.comEarly Girl Eateryearlygirleatery.comZambrazambratapas.comThe Market Placemarketplace-restaurant.com

Tabletableasheville.comThe Inn at the Biltmore Estatebiltmore.comBouchonashevillebouchon.comCucina 24cucina24restaurant.com

Laughing Seed Cafélaughingseed.comCafe Azaleacafeazaleaasheville.comFiore’s Ristorante Toscanafioresasheville.com

“We associate mushrooms with death, and that’s part of the mycophobia. I guess the question is, where do you draw the line between death and rebirth?

The tree is dying, the mushroom is living, then the mushroom is nature’s recycling system. If it’s a circle, where does the circle start and stop, you know?”

— Alan Muskat

Alan Muskat explains the parts of a mushroom toa student on one of his mushroom adventures.

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