Asheville Mushroom Club

Lactarius with Pork, Squash, and Mango
(AMC Collection)

1 lb. fresh Lactarius volemus or corrugis
1/2 lb. boneless pork butt, finely chopped
2 T. olive oil
1 medium sweet onion, chopped
1 c. mixed green and yellow squash, 1/2 inch dice
1 mango, 1/2 inch dice
2 T. light miso dissolved in 1/2 c. warm water
2 T. dry Marsala
2 T. cream
salt and pepper to taste

Chop mushrooms into 1 1/2 inch pieces. Saute pork in hot oil for 1 minute. Lower heat to medium and add onion; saute for 2 minutes. Add mushroom and raise heat to high; toss and stir for 2 minutes. Add squash, mango, dissolved miso,; continue to cook and stir. Continue cooking to reduce miso by half; add Marsala, stirring. Add cream to thicken if desired. Add salt and pepper to taste. Serve with glazed carrots, parsnips, or sauteed red potatoes and green beans.

This recipe is featured in "Cooking with the Asheville Mushroom Club" cook book on page 90.

Club members have collected hundreds of recipes featuring local
and cultivated mushrooms to create a unique specialty cookbook.

Purchase your copy at club meetings for $10 or by ordering from Ken McGill, PO Box 182, Campobello, SC 29322 for $14.95.

Each month we'll be highlighting one mushroom that can be found in WNC during that current month. This is in an attempt to help members or guests learn our local mushrooms. It will also be noted whether the mushroom is edible, ill advised, or poisonous.

Lactarius volemus

This is a really good edible to learn especially for the intermediate mycophagist. They can be quite abundant in our area from early summer through fall. They have filled many baskets while searching for chanterelles was fruitless. In mixed hardwoods look for tan to brown slightly velvety caps, attached white to off-white gills. You’ll know if it is Lactarius by the latex that flows when the gills are injured. With volemus, the latex is white and very abundant. As the latex dries it turns the injured area (as well as your hands, cutting board, countertops, etc.) brown. The smell is rather fishy, but the taste is quite good.

Volemus is a substantial meaty mushroom and if you find enough to preserve for later, try drying them. The texture of the stem might be objectionable, but it’s edible. Slice & dehydrate (the fishy smell will become VERY apparent). To use them just rehydrate with whatever liquid (wine, water, cream, stock, etc.) suits the dish you are making.

In your search you may also find L. corrugis (chocolate brown cap with a corrugated margin) and L. hygrophoroides (very like volemus with widely spaced gills). Both are edible and may be added to or used with volemus.

Get out with the group and learn this one, adding it to your known edible list will add greatly to your pantry supply.

Steve Peek, field mycologist and long standing member of the Asheville Mushroom Club