Be Vewwy Quiet — We’re Hunting Mushwooms!

Wet, Warm Spring Spawns Spectacular ’shrooms

My My friend RT Valine and his wife Jackie were vis­it­ing the Bureau one evening and we got to dis­cussing food and cook­ing. The Valines live in rural Allen, Oklahoma. When the con­di­tions are right, they have access to wild morel mushrooms.

[Sidenote: Morchella escu­lenta, or yel­low morels, are widely dis­trib­uted, but espe­cially com­mon in east­ern North America and the Midwest. They are the most com­mon species found in Oklahoma. Despite the pop­u­lar name, they can be pale brown­ish cream, yel­low to tan or pale brown to gray­ish brown.] Morels are deli­cious, but hard to come by unless you know some­one who knows some­one. I some­times see them at the farm­ers’ mar­ket, but the prices are dear and they dis­ap­pear quickly — you’ve got to be first in line if you expect to buy any.

Being the gen­er­ous peo­ple they are, the Valines invited me to stay in their com­fort­ably appointed guest cabin to for­age for the tasty fungi dur­ing morel sea­son. I gladly accepted the offer.

[Sidenote: When choos­ing food to accom­pany morels, avoid strongly fla­vored ingre­di­ents. The del­i­cate taste and aroma of the mush­rooms is eas­ily over­whelmed. Strong cheeses, raw or under­cooked gar­lic, and highly aro­matic spices are all no-nos. The sim­pler the bet­ter.] The day before I was to travel to Allen I picked up three small rib­eye steaks to accom­pany the mush­rooms we’d be eat­ing for din­ner. I also har­vested some of the vol­un­teer chives that have been grow­ing in my yard since they escaped my neglected herb gar­den many sea­sons ago; these were to go on some scram­bled eggs.

Into the Woods

[Sidenote: The same con­di­tions that pro­duce boun­ti­ful morels also apply to ticks. When for­ag­ing in the Oklahoma woods, wear high boots, long pants, and a long-sleeved top. Apply insect repel­lent gen­er­ously. DEET for direct-to-skin appli­ca­tion and per­me­thrin for apply­ing to cloth­ing are the most effec­tive tick-pre­ven­ta­tives for peo­ple.] I met RT at the Allen Dollar General Store, where we left my MINI Cooper in the park­ing lot. We took his truck straight to the first honey hole: an active oil lease that RT had per­mis­sion to for­age on. Driving slowly on the dirt road into the lease, we watched out the win­dows to see if we could spot any morels. RT saw a cou­ple from the driver’s side, but they were either imma­ture or had begun to dry out. Eventually I saw a good one from the pas­sen­ger side, so we parked and har­vested it, then set out into the woods to see if we could find more.

[Sidenote: For for­ag­ing mush­rooms, I rec­om­mend a sharp car­bon-steel knife and a mush­room brush. Some pur­pose-made mush­room knives have an inte­grated brush. The Opinel No. 8 and the Opinel mush­room knives are clas­sics.] Over the next ninety min­utes or so we har­vested a bounty of morels, with RT spot­ting three for every one I found. We placed our haul in net onion bags on the the­ory it would help spread the spores. At a cer­tain point we con­cluded we had enough and headed to his home­stead, after a quick stop to get my MINI. Arriving at the guest cabin, I dropped off my Gladstone and went up to the main house. There, I took a load off and enjoyed a refresh­ing beer in the Valines’ liv­ing room.

After we had cooled off and recu­per­ated some of our expended energy we set out across the road. RT had had good luck hunt­ing there the pre­vi­ous day and thought we might find more mush­rooms. The dog, Wino, and the two goats, GG and L’il Kim, fol­lowed us and kept us com­pany dur­ing the hunt. An hour in we’d found very few mush­rooms and the older goat, GG, was get­ting tired. By this time my legs were aching and I was bleed­ing from the ubiq­ui­tous saw­briar, so I was glad for the excuse to turn back.

Good Food, Good Company

[Sidenote: Moonshine — RT n’ the 44s] After sun­down, RT pan-fried the steaks over the out­door firepit while I prepped the scram­bled eggs and Jackie cleaned the morels, sea­son­ing half of them with salt, pep­per, and gar­lic to accom­pany the steaks. While the ribeyes were rest­ing I cooked the eggs low and slow à la Jamie Oliver.

We sat around the firepit eat­ing and drink­ing the cold beers. I’d brought along a bot­tle of moon­shine RT had given me a few weeks ear­lier but which I hadn’t fin­ished; we emp­tied it while the embers died down and the crick­ets sang.

Scrambled Eggs (Recipe)

For each person:

3

Farm fresh eggs

2 tsp

Minced chives

2 oz

Grated sharp cheese (e.g., ched­dar)

1 oz

Heavy (whip­ping) cream

(To taste)

Kosher salt & freshly ground black pepper

1½ TBSP

Unsalted but­ter

1. Melt but­ter in a well-sea­soned cast-iron or non-stick pan over low heat.
2. Combine all ingre­di­ents except but­ter in a bowl. Using a heat-proof sil­i­cone spat­ula, gen­tly break the yolks and fold them in. Do not overmix.
3. Pour the eggs into the mid­dle of the pan. As the eggs begin to set, use the spat­ula to move the eggs from the pan edge to the cen­ter, occa­sion­ally turn­ing the mix­ture over. Do not allow eggs to stick or dry out; keep them mov­ing. The mix­ture should form large, soft curds. Remove the pan from the heat as needed to reg­u­late the temperature.
4. When the eggs are barely set — they should be shiny and slightly runny — trans­fer them to a warm plate. Taste for sea­son­ing, adjust­ing if needed, and keep in a warm oven until ready to serve.
5. Serve with morels (sliced cross-wise and sautéed in but­ter) and toast points.

Technical

The pho­tographs in this story were taken with a Hasselblad medium-for­mat film cam­era on Kodak Tri-X. For the image The Last Morel — Oklahoma Morel Foraging, 2019 I employed a Proxar f=1M close-focus lens attached to the Planar 50mm. The pic­ture of the empty moon­shine bot­tle was made with a Leica M9-P with Zeiss Sonnar 50MM lens.

Camera

Hasselblad 503CX with A12 back

Lens

Carl Zeiss Planar C T* 50mm ƒ/2,8

+ Carl Zeiss Proxar f=1M (The Last Morel only)

Aperture

ƒ/​11

Exposure

¹⁄₁₂₅^th second

ISO

400

Film

Kodak Tri-X 400 Professional 120

Developer

Adox Adonal (Rodinal) 1:100

~60 min­utes semi-stand in Paterson Super System 4 day­light tank

Scanner

Epson Perfection v850

Software

Vuescan

Adobe Lightroom 6