Asheville Mushroom Club

Thai Maitake Salad

juice of 1/2 lime
1 T. sugar
3/4 T. Oriental fish sauce
4 c. shredded maitake (hen of the woods), 1 1/2 x 1/4 inch strips
1 T. cooking oil
1 T. ground roasted rice (see below)
1/2 tsp. ground cayenne pepper or hot pepper flakes
1 pinch salt
2 scallions, chopped
1/4 c. chopped fresh mint leaves
1/4 c. chopped fresh cilantro

Mix lime juice, sugar, and fish sauce together in a small bowl; set aside. Saute mushrooms in oil on medium heat until all liquid is released and pan is dry. Add lime juice mixture and stir it in. While lime mixture is being absorbed, dry-fry uncooked Basmati or jasmine rice in a pan over medium heat until slightly browned. Grind in a coffee or spice mill. When all of the lime mixture is absorbed, add ground ricxe, cayenne, salt, and scallions to pan; mix together. Toss with mint and cilantro and serve.

Chop mushrooms in food processor. Saute chopped musrhooms on medium heat (without oil) until they release their liquid. Stir in someolive oil, a little garlic, chopped parsley

This recipe is featured in "Cooking with the Asheville Mushroom Club" cook book on page 41.

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.

Grifola frondosa

Early autumn is a glorious time of the year to be out in nature. I find the brisk nights, warm days and magnificent clear blue sky stimulating to the senses and a restorative to my soul. It’s also the perfect time to look for this month’s featured fungus. Hen of the woods, maitake or whatever you may call it, is quite a good edible and according to some excellent medicine.

The “hen” is well camouflaged & difficult to find for most folks. Confine your search to the hardwood forest, oaks in particular. Look for mature oak trees or oaks that are less than healthy. The “hen” will be found around the base, her ruffled brown/grey fronds looking very much like a broody old hen disturbed from her nest. Once you find her make a note, she can appear at the same spot for many years. Maitake is parasitic on oak, so eventually the tree looses and you must find another “hen tree”.

Specimens can be 1 to 5 pounds or more, so finding one creates the need to either share or preserve the bounty. Maitake can be difficult to clean as it will grow around whatever leaves & stems are in the way, but is well worth the effort. I usually break it into fronds, trim out the foreign matter and give it a brief soak in salt water to evict the insects. In my opinion, drying is the best way to preserve this fungus. Thoroughly dried, sealed in jars and stored in the freezer maitake can be kept for years.

The European world is just now discovering what the Asian world has known for generations: Many mushrooms are good medicine. Maitake, in particular, shows great promise in immunotherapy and a compliment to cancer and HIV treatment as well as helping diabetics with glucose tolerance.

As with all new foods, take a very small portion jut to make sure your system can handle it. A small portion of the population has shown a sensitivity to maitake, so be cautious. It won’t kill, but a severe gastric upset might make you wish you were dead!

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