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Here's a very tasty soup from the AMC Cookbook that illustrates how you can creatively adapt basic recipes to include interesting mushrooms. Add wood ear mushrooms and/or substitute other vegetables for peas to transform this soup into your own specialty! (See suggestions in parentheses.)

Shiitake Hot and Sour Soup, AMC Collection
p. 31, Cooking with the Asheville Mushroom Club

4 dried shiitake, presoaked and drained - strain and reserve liquid
(1 handful of fresh wood ear mushrooms - adds excellent flavor and texture!)
4 oz. firm tofu
2 oz. canned bamboo shoots
2 1/2 c. vegetable stock
2 oz. fresh or frozen green peas (or substitute an equal amount of fresh broccoli flowerettes, miniature corn, sliced carrots, green onions, red or green bell peppers, etc.)
1 T. dark soy sauce
2 T. white wine vinegar
2 T. cornstarch
salt and pepper to taste
sesame oil

Cut shiitake mushrooms, bamboo, and tofu into thin strips. (Cut vegetables into bite sized pieces.) Bring stock to boil and add mushrooms, bamboo, tofu, and peas (or other vegetables). Simmer for 2 minutes. Mix soy sauce, vinegar and cornstarch with 2 T. stock. Stir into soup with remaining stock and reserved mushroom liquid. Add salt and lots of pepper. Simmer for 2 minutes, add sesame oil, and serve. Serves 4. (This soup is delicious served with fried wonton wrapper strips.)

Tree ears give wonderful texture and interest to this delicious Asian vegetarian main dish. 

Tree Ears with Bean Thread, AMC Collection
Cooking with the Asheville Mushroom Club, p. 127

3 T. tamari or soy sauce
2 T. brown rice vinegar
1 T. mirin sauce (optional)
1 pkg. bean thread or cellophance noodles
1/2 tsp. toasted sesame oil
2 cloves garlic, minced
1 T. grated fresh ginger root
1/2 c. sliced green onions
1/2 c. snow peas
1/2 c. grated carrot
1/2 c. sliced tree ear mushrooms
1 egg, lightly beaten

Mix tamari, vinegar and mirin together in a bowl and set aside. Soak noodles in a large bowl of hot water for 15 minutes or until soft. Drain and set aside. Place oil in a non-stick fryiing pan over medium-high heat. Add garlic and ginger and cook until garlic just begins to color. Add onions, carrot and snow peas, and stir fry for a few minutes. Add tree ears and cook for one more minute. While stirring, drizzle the egg in slowly. Stir and cook until the egg is evenly distributed through the vegetables. Now add noodles and quickly pour soy suce mixture over them. Stir everything together and cook until the noodles become transparent and stained with sauce, approximately 3 - 5 minutes. Serves 2 hungry people.

These recipes is featured in "Cooking with
the Asheville Mushroom Club" cook book on
pages 31 and 127.


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.

Click here to download an order form.

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.

Auricularia auricula (tree ear, wood ear, etc…)

If the recent warm weather has you longing for a hike take a small collecting basket with you. Look closely at the dead trees & limbs as you pass for brown rubbery ear-like fungi. Wood ears grow most commonly on dead conifer wood, but, I have seen them on hard wood as well. In my experience wood ear can fruit almost anytime of year, at least in our area. If the weather has been moist they will be brown and rubbery, if it’s been dry for several days they’ll be very small, black and brittle. This is a fairly safe mushroom for beginners to collect & sample, so long as they collect only brown, ear-like fungi growing on wood. In warmer weather there are similar (but brittle) species that grow on earth which could be poisonous.

This isn’t a hugely sought after culinary mushroom. Most of the ones I find have the taste & texture of faintly fungal rubber bands, but there is great variability in the flavor. Perhaps some mycologist will someday split them into several subspecies. Those of us who enjoy Chinese hot/sour soup know it just wouldn’t be the same without them.

Medicinally speaking, there are recent studies suggesting positive effects on coronary artery disease. This is new to Western medicine, but something the Chinese herbalists have known for centuries. Wood ear is thought to be one of the reasons for the low occurrence of coronary artery disease in China.

This isn’t the time of year to go out and fill a basket with edibles (unless you find a huge fruiting of oysters), but during the warming trends be aware. Have a good month.

Steve 

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

Images by: Olga K, and Tradd C.