00:00:00
Speaker 1: Join the conversation. Well, we are stepping out of our individual gardens today and into the big wild garden of Mother Nature because I want to put the spotlight on mushrooms in particular. I wonder if you know that there are something like 4 million different varieties of mushrooms and other fungi worldwide and that they play an absolutely invaluable role in our ecosystems. Here in South Africa, we are thought to have something like 170,000 different variations. But of course, the crucial thing if you're going to go looking for them is knowing how to tell them apart, especially if you are looking for them with the aim of eating them at the end of the process. How do you know which ones are safe to eat? How do you identify what mushroom you're picking? Well, one way to do so is to have in hand the book that has just been published by Strike Nature. It's an updated version of their field guide to the mushrooms and other fungi of South Africa. And I'm delighted to have one of the authors with me in studio today to talk about our mushrooms, to talk about what is involved in foraging, what you need to know if you'd like to give it a try. and to talk to us about identifying different mushroom types. His name is Gary Goldman. He is a mushroom specialist and amateur mycologist based here in Cape Town. You might know him better as the Mushroom Fundy from his website of that name. And perhaps you've already had the opportunity to go on a foraging expedition with him. But if you haven't and you'd like to ask questions, you're very welcome to send them through on the WhatsApp line 072-567-1567. It's great to have you back on the show, Gary. Welcome.
00:01:26
Speaker 2: Thank you, Pippa.
00:01:28
Speaker 1: Just remind us where they fit into the ecosystem, neither an animal nor a plant, technically.
00:01:33
Speaker 2: Neither or. I like to break them up into three different ecologies. I like to say you've got your saprophytes, which will break down dead organic matter. These are the ones which people cultivate. Then you've got your parasites or pathogens, which will attack a live tree and slowly but surely kill that host tree. And then you've got your third kind, which we like to find in the forests for culinary purposes called the mycorrhizals. Myco is a mushroom and rhizal is a root. So they're on the roots of certain types of trees.
00:02:03
Speaker 1: Yeah.
00:02:03
Speaker 2: OK.
00:02:04
Speaker 1: So, I mean, those are big umbrellas in and of themselves. Roughly how big are those different categories? How many different types of mushrooms fall under those?
00:02:15
Speaker 2: It's difficult to say because when you are saying there's over 4 million different species in the world of fungi, you are talking about microscopics as well. Whereas we like to talk about something called macro fungi. And a macro fungi is a mushroom which has got a cap of 5 millimeters or larger. It's basically visible to the eye. And of those, there's about 36,000 in the world. Sorry, 136,000.
00:02:39
Speaker 1: 136,000. Okay. So even within that category, you've got to be very particular about which mushrooms you're picking and which ones you're eating. You've mentioned some of the roles they play in the ecosystem there besides the edible issue. And we know humans have been eating them and also using them medicinally for thousands of years. But Gary, you mentioned the breakdown of organic matter. I mean, that's one of the key roles they play. It's why we really need to make sure that they endure in our ecosystem.
00:03:03
Speaker 2: Mushrooms are earth decomposers. That's what they do. That's their main purpose.
00:03:08
Speaker 1: What would happen if they were to disappear?
00:03:11
Speaker 2: You wouldn't be able to walk through the forest because whenever there's a storm and a tree falls down or a branch falls off a tree, it'll still be there. It won't be broken up. Okay. Unless there was a fire, of course, but it'll be impossible to walk through the forest in nature because there'll be this constant... falling down and building up of broken material, which will just sit there forever.
00:03:32
Speaker 1: Okay. So don't underestimate their importance in the ecosystem beyond what you can do with them personally in your kitchen. Now, I mean, when it comes to picking mushrooms to eat, Gary, obviously everybody's heard the horror stories of the poisonous mushrooms that can kill somebody with just a bite. And we've heard the court cases around people who've deliberately done that as a murder tactic. But That's quite a small proportion of them overall, isn't it, that are that dangerous to humans?
00:03:59
Speaker 2: Of those 136,000, only 100 are classified as being poisonous.
00:04:02
Speaker 1: That little?
00:04:03
Speaker 2: And of those 100, only 10 have got deadly toxins. So your chances are good, but you don't want to take that chance.
00:04:09
Speaker 1: Let's talk about what happens if you get the wrong kind.
00:04:12
Speaker 2: It depends which type it is, but something like the death cap, which causes 95% of mushroom poisoning deaths in the world. only 12% of people who consume that mushroom actually perish. Okay. So it's not going to kill everybody, but it's going to make the people who consume it never die. We want to eat mushrooms again.
00:04:31
Speaker 1: Yeah.
00:04:31
Speaker 2: Yeah.
00:04:32
Speaker 1: OK, fair enough. So you need to be careful and it's not to cause a panic here, but obviously you need to know what you're doing if you're going out in the wild and picking them. And we'll talk a little bit about identifying them. But first, a question already in from Beverly on the WhatsApp line. She asks, what is the black debris that one finds on a shop bought mushroom and does it need to be cleaned off before cooking? And if so, wash off or brush off? My home economics teacher would swear you never put water on a mushroom. You always brush off. But I've heard people who go, no, you absolutely have to wash to get rid of that debris. Do you want to respond?
00:05:03
Speaker 2: You never wash a mushroom, especially wild mushrooms. They absorb the water and they become all soggy.
00:05:07
Speaker 1: That's it.
00:05:08
Speaker 2: But the black debris I think she's talking about is peat. That's what they cultivate the button mushroom called agaricus bisporus, which is found in all the different stores. That is cultivated on the peat. I never wash it off, but I like to try and keep it out of my nice clean dish of fried up mushrooms because it does stick out like a sore thumb. Yeah.
00:05:29
Speaker 1: So brush, not wash. Absolutely.
00:05:31
Speaker 2: Mr.
00:05:31
Speaker 1: Steptoe, you were right, but I think you knew that already. Thank you. And brush it off, but do try and remove it before cooking. Bev, thanks for your question. Any other questions, you're very welcome to send a WhatsApp to 072-567-1567. Now, Gary, if you are Gary Goldman and you know your mushrooms inside out, I would imagine you have a great time foraging in the Western Cape. But for an absolute amateur who doesn't even know where to start, how easy or difficult is it?
00:05:59
Speaker 2: I do mushroom foraging events all the time. People can contact me and try and book onto one of them. It's usually during the rainy season, even though I've still got a few bookings over the next few weeks. And then I guarantee finding the wild mushrooms for breakfast or we reschedule and go again or I gift them a copy of my book. And I eat 50 different species from Table Mountain.
00:06:22
Speaker 1: From Table Mountain alone?
00:06:24
Speaker 2: So there's, and they all come up in their own micro season. So each species has got a, A season of between two and eight weeks. And it'll come up again later in the year. If the temperature is the same range and the moisture is the same range, it'll stop popping up again. So they each have a little growth parameter.
00:06:44
Speaker 1: So they only pop up when the conditions are precisely correct.
00:06:47
Speaker 2: There's a lot which only pop up when temperatures drop below four degrees Celsius.
00:06:50
Speaker 1: Which doesn't happen all that often.
00:06:51
Speaker 2: No. So they've been a bit rare now. I'm thinking of the guys who go out looking for magic mushrooms. In particular, the psilocybins, they need a cold flush in order to come out. So they only come out around two to four degrees Celsius. And people often ask me, where are the magic mushrooms? And you don't want to tell people this because there's so much more to the mushroom, especially the culinary part. I like to tell people who say that they love the exotics, which are cultivated Chinese mushrooms, the enokis, oringis, and et cetera. They all taste like rubber and they seem to want to add herbs or garlic or soy sauce to them to give them any sort of flavor. But with wild mushrooms, I like to say they're all edible. Some are all tasty, some more tastier than others.
00:07:37
Speaker 1: I'm laughing at the quote somebody just sent me from Terry Pratchett. All fungi are edible. It's just that some are only edible once. Brilliant one, Jenny. Thank you. Let's talk about the local varieties. I'm taking your point. The flavor of our local wild mushrooms, if you know where to find them and which ones and how to treat them, is something very, very special. I mean, I think back, Gary, to my childhood, you got white mushrooms and black mushrooms in the shops, and that was the only thing we ever saw. I remember the first time I saw a king mushroom or an enoki, looking at them going, what on earth is that and where did it come from? We've gotten more used to the concept of diversity of mushrooms. But as you say, a lot of what we're buying as the weird species are imported ones. Talk to us a little bit more about some of the local wild ones that you would recommend.
00:08:21
Speaker 2: Well, they're cultivated. Yeah. So when it comes to saying they're local and they're native to South Africa, that's not true because the mycorrhizals need to grow on certain types of trees. And these types of trees, when they first brought over acorns, for example, or pine nuts, and they tried to grow them into a tree, they couldn't get them to grow into a tree. And you can try this out. You can take an acorn, put it into cotton wool, add some water, and it's going to sprout. It's going to come up. And then eventually, after a few days, it's going to keel over and just die. And the reason for that is it requires a mycorrhizal a mycorrhizal mushroom on the root in order to survive. So then they started bringing over little saplings and in the soil were all these species of wild mushrooms that we now find under the oaks and the poplars and the pine trees. So they're not native to this country. They're here because they were on the roots of certain types of trees.
00:09:11
Speaker 1: Okay, that's absolutely fascinating. Now, in terms of using this guide to help you when going foraging, I mean, let's talk a little bit. Firstly, I mean, just to sit and page through it is fascinating because you recognize the massive diversity in the shape and size and coloring of the different caps. And, you know, some of them are... like an upturned umbrella. Some of them are in the correct position for an umbrella as we would use it. Some of them are sort of conical and parabolic in shape. Huge diversity and some of them so beautiful you wouldn't want to pick them, Gary. You wouldn't want to leave them and admire them like you would a flower. Where does one even start when you go on a foraging trip knowing what one can pick or not? If you've got this book with you, how do you actually use it?
00:09:54
Speaker 2: I try and encourage people not to take the book with them because when I began, I took out the library books and it rained and I had to buy those books. They were very expensive. So I never take a mushroom book with me. And besides that, you're going to get it filthy. So I normally take two baskets. This is where, when I started, all the old South African mushroom books were saying, find a mushroom expert before you consume any of the edible mushrooms. I'm still looking for the experts. They don't exist.
00:10:20
Speaker 1: Aren't you the expert, Harry?
00:10:21
Speaker 2: I've become the expert because of it. And so I used to take out two baskets. In the one basket was the edibles that I knew I was picking, and they were edibles. And in the other basket, I'd pick all different types of mushrooms, take them home, lay them out on the table, and then look them up in the books.
00:10:36
Speaker 1: Ah, okay. So keeping separate what you weren't 100% sure of. That makes sense. I know cross-contamination, if you have picked up that something is dangerous, but also just allowing your space... to get a specimen home. They're quite fragile in terms of layering in that basket. Any advice?
00:10:53
Speaker 2: No, you just put them in gently.
00:10:55
Speaker 1: Just be gentle.
00:10:55
Speaker 2: Clean them off before you put them in the basket. Unless you don't know what it is, then leave it whole. You know, it's just a matter of taking them home and looking at the features. When I began, I was a database person, so I put everything into a spreadsheet. So I had the scientific name and the common name and then the color of the cap, the size of the cap, the size of the stem, what was known as bulbous or tapering or whatever. And I had this whole spreadsheet full of these different columns of information. And the one thing which really helped me in the beginning was the fact that I used to do spore prints. And you do a spore print, the book does show you, but you do a spore print by putting a dark piece of paper and a light piece of paper together. You'll cut the cap off right at the apex of the stem and you'll put it across those two pieces of color with paper. The reason you use a dark color and a light color piece of paper is you don't know what color the spores are going to be. So if it's light, it'll show up on a dark piece of paper and vice versa. And I then would spread, I'd sort my spreadsheet into spore color and I would see all the white spores and there were only 15 or something like that. And then I'd be able to identify from that mushroom which one it was out of those. And if I wasn't correct with that, then I would put it aside and I'd take photographs of it. And later we learned about DNA sequencing where we could send them off to the University of the Free State or University of Stellenbosch. And there's also a few other universities which handle it. And they will take your photographs, your samples, and they will do DNA sequencing and tell you exactly what it is.
00:12:29
Speaker 1: Okay. By which point it's probably too late to eat it, I would imagine.
00:12:32
Speaker 2: No, you don't want to eat something. So we like to say when in doubt, leave it out.
00:12:36
Speaker 1: Leave it out, yeah.
00:12:37
Speaker 2: Don't put it in your basket if you don't know what it is because it just could be that wrong one.
00:12:41
Speaker 1: Yeah, and as you say, even if it's not going to kill you, it's going to leave you with a distaste for mushrooms for the rest of your life, which would be an absolute tragedy. A couple of questions coming in on practical matters. Firstly, this is an interesting one. Email from Wendy asking whether it's possible to distinguish mushrooms by their smell.
00:12:57
Speaker 2: Some you can. Some you can. For example, I discovered the mushroom in Newlands Forest just before the book came out in 2019. The first issue of this book. And I looked it up and it was called a Rassoula Zerumpalina, which is known as the shrimp Rassoula. So when you smell it, when it's older, it smells of seafood. And when you taste it, it tastes of crab meat. It's the most wonderful mushroom. Rassoula Zerumpalina, shrimp Rassoula, or as the Americans call it, brittle gill. So they used to call it crab meat brittle gill.
00:13:29
Speaker 1: Okay.
00:13:30
Speaker 2: Wonderful mushroom. Then you've got the others like the stinker, which is an Amanita, or Sapra Amanita now, which now grows on the fields and things. And it stinks like dog urine.
00:13:39
Speaker 1: Ooh.
00:13:39
Speaker 2: Yeah, and there's some you can distinguish. I can distinguish a porcini from its smell. It's got a unique smell to it. Okay. I have smelled a similar smell in other parasols and stuff like that. And so there's a category in the book tab for smell.
00:13:57
Speaker 1: Okay.
00:13:59
Speaker 2: I try to break up the book and leave nothing unwritten. So it's got a smell, whether it says indistinguishable or not. smells of urine or it smells of of seafood or whatever type of um and some some mushrooms you'll pick them and they'll smell like raw potato others you will taste and they'll taste like horseradish or wasabi so there's also the taste test yeah and something people should actually realize is that when you taste a mushroom um you don't necessarily swallow it you don't swallow it because you don't know what it is and afterwards if it's bitter you spit it out So I often do the taste test on the purple stem rasoola, which has got an extremely acrid taste.
00:14:40
Speaker 1: Okay.
00:14:41
Speaker 2: And people moan like crazy when I tell them to taste it. But I always do the taste as well to show them I'll do it. It's just like wasabi. You've got a bitter mouth for a few minutes and then it's back to normal again to have a sip of water.
00:14:55
Speaker 1: We are in conversation with Gary Goldman, who is the co-author, along with Marike Gresenhout and Liz Poppich, of the newly updated Field Guide to Mushrooms and Other Fungi of South Africa. It is the most beautifully put together book. The photography really makes you admire these fungi from a different perspective. It's like looking at a guide to wildflowers when you dig in and realize the massive diversity in shape, in color, in scent, in edible uses, etc. A few people are asking about storage of mushrooms and use of mushrooms. So Lauren's emailing to say, how soon after picking is it still safe to eat them? And how do you get better longevity out of them?
00:15:35
Speaker 2: When I do my mushroom forages, I try to advise people, I try to point them in the direction of cooking them on the same day. You can then put them into Tupperware and store it in the fridge for up to two days and Or you can put it in a Tupperware and store it in the deep freeze for up to two months. But you need to cook it before you do that. Okay. That's the sort of advice I try and give people. But it's different for each species. It's different. Each type of morphology of mushroom, like the bulliards. The bulliards are the ones which got sponge under the cap. They're far more firmer than the amanitas or the parasols or the field mushrooms. They're far more solid. So you can keep those for longer. So what I used to do when I first began, I used to, collect mushrooms for the restaurants and for the markets and for the celebrity chefs. And it's a well-paid job if you can find the mushrooms. Now it's crazy. Now everybody and the aunties found out about it. The cat's out of the bag. So I used to keep my porcinis because I used to find them on the Monday and I wanted to give them to the market on the Saturday. And each mushroom's got a shelf life. So the shelf life used to be three days. So how do you make it last for longer? So after... extensive reading and things, I found out that people in mostly Italy, they would store the mushroom, the boletus, with the soil on them.
00:16:54
Speaker 1: Around it, yeah.
00:16:55
Speaker 2: Still on it. Okay. And that gives it an extra one-day shelf life. They would store it in a cardboard box in a normal fridge of between, what's it, three to four degrees Celsius.
00:17:07
Speaker 1: Okay.
00:17:08
Speaker 2: And with a lid, like a cardboard box, like a shoe box is perfect. Yeah. Put your mushrooms in there and you can keep it for a day or two longer. Yeah. But what people must be aware of is that there's other fungi in the forest attacking these mushrooms. So after a day or two, you may feel that your mushrooms turn a different color or it's got sort of a spidey web look around it. That's just another fungus that is growing on it. You don't know what that fungus is. You don't know if it's possibly toxic. So that's why I say with the wild mushrooms, you want to cook it.
00:17:41
Speaker 1: Immediately.
00:17:42
Speaker 2: The same day.
00:17:43
Speaker 1: Until you get home.
00:17:44
Speaker 2: The same day. Cook them all. I normally say, what you do, because when we finish a forage, I say, look through my basket. I say, no, no, I'm not doing that. Because sometimes the basket's full and you can't see everything. So I say, when you get home, you put them out on the table and you put them into the same species in the same piles. Yeah. Each pile, different species, so you can see which species they are. And then you cook each one separately, so you can see if you like it or not. I have the same way that I do it every time. I would fry them up in butter. Yeah. And then I'd put some of them onto a slice of toast and the other slice of toast, a nice soft fried egg and a cup of moor coffee, which is filter coffee. And those three as a combination, it's just like heaven.
00:18:25
Speaker 1: Breakfast of champions. It sounds amazing.
00:18:27
Speaker 2: So every time I find a new species, that's exactly how I do it.
00:18:30
Speaker 1: Okay. On toast with a fried egg and some moor coffee. Sounds like heaven. Very important question. Does one need a permit to go foraging for mushrooms?
00:18:38
Speaker 2: It depends where you go. But when it comes to a national park, yes, you do need a permit. Okay. And permits are obtainable through sandparks. They normally issue a permit. They used to issue it every month. And then if you were in time, you got a permit. And if you weren't in time, you didn't get a permit. Now they will issue you with a permit from the 1st of April to the end of August. And even when it rains in December again, I contact them and say, listen, it's raining. Mushrooms will be out in two weeks' time. Can you issue me with another permit? They issue me with a permit. So they're very doable. Just a matter of making sure you contact them before you Go and walk. Because if you're caught without a permit, they used to fine people two and a half thousand rand. Okay. But doctors and lawyer friends of mine who got these fines and they couldn't sign the admission of guilt at the back, which means they'll have a criminal record, they would go to court. And when they got to the court, the judge would look at this and say, what is this? And tear it up. So it was a useless piece of paper. But still, they were issuing for two and a half thousand rand. which is a lot for.
00:19:39
Speaker 1: A lot of people. So do it the right way. Get the permit first.
00:19:41
Speaker 2: Get the permit.
00:19:42
Speaker 1: And then go foraging. Or go early.
00:19:44
Speaker 2: Okay.
00:19:44
Speaker 1: And at the end of the day, when you take your mushrooms home, then pick up a copy of the Field Guide to Mushrooms and Other Functions. to help you identify them and make sure you're only eating the ones that are safe. Gary, thanks. Always fascinating to chat to you. I can see your passion for the subject never wanes. We have a copy of Gary's book to give away. So if you would like to win a copy, send us a WhatsApp to 0725671567. with your name and the word fungi, please, on our WhatsApp line. And the first person to do that will win a copy of the brand new field guide valued at 590 Rand. It is available in stores now. Gary, fascinating to chat to you. Thanks for joining me today.
00:20:20
Speaker 2: It's just gone up to 620.
00:20:21
Speaker 1: Just gone up to 620.
00:20:22
Speaker 2: Don't wait.
00:20:24
Speaker 1: Get your WhatsApp through in a hurry.
Speaker 1: Join the conversation. Well, we are stepping out of our individual gardens today and into the big wild garden of Mother Nature because I want to put the spotlight on mushrooms in particular. I wonder if you know that there are something like 4 million different varieties of mushrooms and other fungi worldwide and that they play an absolutely invaluable role in our ecosystems. Here in South Africa, we are thought to have something like 170,000 different variations. But of course, the crucial thing if you're going to go looking for them is knowing how to tell them apart, especially if you are looking for them with the aim of eating them at the end of the process. How do you know which ones are safe to eat? How do you identify what mushroom you're picking? Well, one way to do so is to have in hand the book that has just been published by Strike Nature. It's an updated version of their field guide to the mushrooms and other fungi of South Africa. And I'm delighted to have one of the authors with me in studio today to talk about our mushrooms, to talk about what is involved in foraging, what you need to know if you'd like to give it a try. and to talk to us about identifying different mushroom types. His name is Gary Goldman. He is a mushroom specialist and amateur mycologist based here in Cape Town. You might know him better as the Mushroom Fundy from his website of that name. And perhaps you've already had the opportunity to go on a foraging expedition with him. But if you haven't and you'd like to ask questions, you're very welcome to send them through on the WhatsApp line 072-567-1567. It's great to have you back on the show, Gary. Welcome.
00:01:26
Speaker 2: Thank you, Pippa.
00:01:28
Speaker 1: Just remind us where they fit into the ecosystem, neither an animal nor a plant, technically.
00:01:33
Speaker 2: Neither or. I like to break them up into three different ecologies. I like to say you've got your saprophytes, which will break down dead organic matter. These are the ones which people cultivate. Then you've got your parasites or pathogens, which will attack a live tree and slowly but surely kill that host tree. And then you've got your third kind, which we like to find in the forests for culinary purposes called the mycorrhizals. Myco is a mushroom and rhizal is a root. So they're on the roots of certain types of trees.
00:02:03
Speaker 1: Yeah.
00:02:03
Speaker 2: OK.
00:02:04
Speaker 1: So, I mean, those are big umbrellas in and of themselves. Roughly how big are those different categories? How many different types of mushrooms fall under those?
00:02:15
Speaker 2: It's difficult to say because when you are saying there's over 4 million different species in the world of fungi, you are talking about microscopics as well. Whereas we like to talk about something called macro fungi. And a macro fungi is a mushroom which has got a cap of 5 millimeters or larger. It's basically visible to the eye. And of those, there's about 36,000 in the world. Sorry, 136,000.
00:02:39
Speaker 1: 136,000. Okay. So even within that category, you've got to be very particular about which mushrooms you're picking and which ones you're eating. You've mentioned some of the roles they play in the ecosystem there besides the edible issue. And we know humans have been eating them and also using them medicinally for thousands of years. But Gary, you mentioned the breakdown of organic matter. I mean, that's one of the key roles they play. It's why we really need to make sure that they endure in our ecosystem.
00:03:03
Speaker 2: Mushrooms are earth decomposers. That's what they do. That's their main purpose.
00:03:08
Speaker 1: What would happen if they were to disappear?
00:03:11
Speaker 2: You wouldn't be able to walk through the forest because whenever there's a storm and a tree falls down or a branch falls off a tree, it'll still be there. It won't be broken up. Okay. Unless there was a fire, of course, but it'll be impossible to walk through the forest in nature because there'll be this constant... falling down and building up of broken material, which will just sit there forever.
00:03:32
Speaker 1: Okay. So don't underestimate their importance in the ecosystem beyond what you can do with them personally in your kitchen. Now, I mean, when it comes to picking mushrooms to eat, Gary, obviously everybody's heard the horror stories of the poisonous mushrooms that can kill somebody with just a bite. And we've heard the court cases around people who've deliberately done that as a murder tactic. But That's quite a small proportion of them overall, isn't it, that are that dangerous to humans?
00:03:59
Speaker 2: Of those 136,000, only 100 are classified as being poisonous.
00:04:02
Speaker 1: That little?
00:04:03
Speaker 2: And of those 100, only 10 have got deadly toxins. So your chances are good, but you don't want to take that chance.
00:04:09
Speaker 1: Let's talk about what happens if you get the wrong kind.
00:04:12
Speaker 2: It depends which type it is, but something like the death cap, which causes 95% of mushroom poisoning deaths in the world. only 12% of people who consume that mushroom actually perish. Okay. So it's not going to kill everybody, but it's going to make the people who consume it never die. We want to eat mushrooms again.
00:04:31
Speaker 1: Yeah.
00:04:31
Speaker 2: Yeah.
00:04:32
Speaker 1: OK, fair enough. So you need to be careful and it's not to cause a panic here, but obviously you need to know what you're doing if you're going out in the wild and picking them. And we'll talk a little bit about identifying them. But first, a question already in from Beverly on the WhatsApp line. She asks, what is the black debris that one finds on a shop bought mushroom and does it need to be cleaned off before cooking? And if so, wash off or brush off? My home economics teacher would swear you never put water on a mushroom. You always brush off. But I've heard people who go, no, you absolutely have to wash to get rid of that debris. Do you want to respond?
00:05:03
Speaker 2: You never wash a mushroom, especially wild mushrooms. They absorb the water and they become all soggy.
00:05:07
Speaker 1: That's it.
00:05:08
Speaker 2: But the black debris I think she's talking about is peat. That's what they cultivate the button mushroom called agaricus bisporus, which is found in all the different stores. That is cultivated on the peat. I never wash it off, but I like to try and keep it out of my nice clean dish of fried up mushrooms because it does stick out like a sore thumb. Yeah.
00:05:29
Speaker 1: So brush, not wash. Absolutely.
00:05:31
Speaker 2: Mr.
00:05:31
Speaker 1: Steptoe, you were right, but I think you knew that already. Thank you. And brush it off, but do try and remove it before cooking. Bev, thanks for your question. Any other questions, you're very welcome to send a WhatsApp to 072-567-1567. Now, Gary, if you are Gary Goldman and you know your mushrooms inside out, I would imagine you have a great time foraging in the Western Cape. But for an absolute amateur who doesn't even know where to start, how easy or difficult is it?
00:05:59
Speaker 2: I do mushroom foraging events all the time. People can contact me and try and book onto one of them. It's usually during the rainy season, even though I've still got a few bookings over the next few weeks. And then I guarantee finding the wild mushrooms for breakfast or we reschedule and go again or I gift them a copy of my book. And I eat 50 different species from Table Mountain.
00:06:22
Speaker 1: From Table Mountain alone?
00:06:24
Speaker 2: So there's, and they all come up in their own micro season. So each species has got a, A season of between two and eight weeks. And it'll come up again later in the year. If the temperature is the same range and the moisture is the same range, it'll stop popping up again. So they each have a little growth parameter.
00:06:44
Speaker 1: So they only pop up when the conditions are precisely correct.
00:06:47
Speaker 2: There's a lot which only pop up when temperatures drop below four degrees Celsius.
00:06:50
Speaker 1: Which doesn't happen all that often.
00:06:51
Speaker 2: No. So they've been a bit rare now. I'm thinking of the guys who go out looking for magic mushrooms. In particular, the psilocybins, they need a cold flush in order to come out. So they only come out around two to four degrees Celsius. And people often ask me, where are the magic mushrooms? And you don't want to tell people this because there's so much more to the mushroom, especially the culinary part. I like to tell people who say that they love the exotics, which are cultivated Chinese mushrooms, the enokis, oringis, and et cetera. They all taste like rubber and they seem to want to add herbs or garlic or soy sauce to them to give them any sort of flavor. But with wild mushrooms, I like to say they're all edible. Some are all tasty, some more tastier than others.
00:07:37
Speaker 1: I'm laughing at the quote somebody just sent me from Terry Pratchett. All fungi are edible. It's just that some are only edible once. Brilliant one, Jenny. Thank you. Let's talk about the local varieties. I'm taking your point. The flavor of our local wild mushrooms, if you know where to find them and which ones and how to treat them, is something very, very special. I mean, I think back, Gary, to my childhood, you got white mushrooms and black mushrooms in the shops, and that was the only thing we ever saw. I remember the first time I saw a king mushroom or an enoki, looking at them going, what on earth is that and where did it come from? We've gotten more used to the concept of diversity of mushrooms. But as you say, a lot of what we're buying as the weird species are imported ones. Talk to us a little bit more about some of the local wild ones that you would recommend.
00:08:21
Speaker 2: Well, they're cultivated. Yeah. So when it comes to saying they're local and they're native to South Africa, that's not true because the mycorrhizals need to grow on certain types of trees. And these types of trees, when they first brought over acorns, for example, or pine nuts, and they tried to grow them into a tree, they couldn't get them to grow into a tree. And you can try this out. You can take an acorn, put it into cotton wool, add some water, and it's going to sprout. It's going to come up. And then eventually, after a few days, it's going to keel over and just die. And the reason for that is it requires a mycorrhizal a mycorrhizal mushroom on the root in order to survive. So then they started bringing over little saplings and in the soil were all these species of wild mushrooms that we now find under the oaks and the poplars and the pine trees. So they're not native to this country. They're here because they were on the roots of certain types of trees.
00:09:11
Speaker 1: Okay, that's absolutely fascinating. Now, in terms of using this guide to help you when going foraging, I mean, let's talk a little bit. Firstly, I mean, just to sit and page through it is fascinating because you recognize the massive diversity in the shape and size and coloring of the different caps. And, you know, some of them are... like an upturned umbrella. Some of them are in the correct position for an umbrella as we would use it. Some of them are sort of conical and parabolic in shape. Huge diversity and some of them so beautiful you wouldn't want to pick them, Gary. You wouldn't want to leave them and admire them like you would a flower. Where does one even start when you go on a foraging trip knowing what one can pick or not? If you've got this book with you, how do you actually use it?
00:09:54
Speaker 2: I try and encourage people not to take the book with them because when I began, I took out the library books and it rained and I had to buy those books. They were very expensive. So I never take a mushroom book with me. And besides that, you're going to get it filthy. So I normally take two baskets. This is where, when I started, all the old South African mushroom books were saying, find a mushroom expert before you consume any of the edible mushrooms. I'm still looking for the experts. They don't exist.
00:10:20
Speaker 1: Aren't you the expert, Harry?
00:10:21
Speaker 2: I've become the expert because of it. And so I used to take out two baskets. In the one basket was the edibles that I knew I was picking, and they were edibles. And in the other basket, I'd pick all different types of mushrooms, take them home, lay them out on the table, and then look them up in the books.
00:10:36
Speaker 1: Ah, okay. So keeping separate what you weren't 100% sure of. That makes sense. I know cross-contamination, if you have picked up that something is dangerous, but also just allowing your space... to get a specimen home. They're quite fragile in terms of layering in that basket. Any advice?
00:10:53
Speaker 2: No, you just put them in gently.
00:10:55
Speaker 1: Just be gentle.
00:10:55
Speaker 2: Clean them off before you put them in the basket. Unless you don't know what it is, then leave it whole. You know, it's just a matter of taking them home and looking at the features. When I began, I was a database person, so I put everything into a spreadsheet. So I had the scientific name and the common name and then the color of the cap, the size of the cap, the size of the stem, what was known as bulbous or tapering or whatever. And I had this whole spreadsheet full of these different columns of information. And the one thing which really helped me in the beginning was the fact that I used to do spore prints. And you do a spore print, the book does show you, but you do a spore print by putting a dark piece of paper and a light piece of paper together. You'll cut the cap off right at the apex of the stem and you'll put it across those two pieces of color with paper. The reason you use a dark color and a light color piece of paper is you don't know what color the spores are going to be. So if it's light, it'll show up on a dark piece of paper and vice versa. And I then would spread, I'd sort my spreadsheet into spore color and I would see all the white spores and there were only 15 or something like that. And then I'd be able to identify from that mushroom which one it was out of those. And if I wasn't correct with that, then I would put it aside and I'd take photographs of it. And later we learned about DNA sequencing where we could send them off to the University of the Free State or University of Stellenbosch. And there's also a few other universities which handle it. And they will take your photographs, your samples, and they will do DNA sequencing and tell you exactly what it is.
00:12:29
Speaker 1: Okay. By which point it's probably too late to eat it, I would imagine.
00:12:32
Speaker 2: No, you don't want to eat something. So we like to say when in doubt, leave it out.
00:12:36
Speaker 1: Leave it out, yeah.
00:12:37
Speaker 2: Don't put it in your basket if you don't know what it is because it just could be that wrong one.
00:12:41
Speaker 1: Yeah, and as you say, even if it's not going to kill you, it's going to leave you with a distaste for mushrooms for the rest of your life, which would be an absolute tragedy. A couple of questions coming in on practical matters. Firstly, this is an interesting one. Email from Wendy asking whether it's possible to distinguish mushrooms by their smell.
00:12:57
Speaker 2: Some you can. Some you can. For example, I discovered the mushroom in Newlands Forest just before the book came out in 2019. The first issue of this book. And I looked it up and it was called a Rassoula Zerumpalina, which is known as the shrimp Rassoula. So when you smell it, when it's older, it smells of seafood. And when you taste it, it tastes of crab meat. It's the most wonderful mushroom. Rassoula Zerumpalina, shrimp Rassoula, or as the Americans call it, brittle gill. So they used to call it crab meat brittle gill.
00:13:29
Speaker 1: Okay.
00:13:30
Speaker 2: Wonderful mushroom. Then you've got the others like the stinker, which is an Amanita, or Sapra Amanita now, which now grows on the fields and things. And it stinks like dog urine.
00:13:39
Speaker 1: Ooh.
00:13:39
Speaker 2: Yeah, and there's some you can distinguish. I can distinguish a porcini from its smell. It's got a unique smell to it. Okay. I have smelled a similar smell in other parasols and stuff like that. And so there's a category in the book tab for smell.
00:13:57
Speaker 1: Okay.
00:13:59
Speaker 2: I try to break up the book and leave nothing unwritten. So it's got a smell, whether it says indistinguishable or not. smells of urine or it smells of of seafood or whatever type of um and some some mushrooms you'll pick them and they'll smell like raw potato others you will taste and they'll taste like horseradish or wasabi so there's also the taste test yeah and something people should actually realize is that when you taste a mushroom um you don't necessarily swallow it you don't swallow it because you don't know what it is and afterwards if it's bitter you spit it out So I often do the taste test on the purple stem rasoola, which has got an extremely acrid taste.
00:14:40
Speaker 1: Okay.
00:14:41
Speaker 2: And people moan like crazy when I tell them to taste it. But I always do the taste as well to show them I'll do it. It's just like wasabi. You've got a bitter mouth for a few minutes and then it's back to normal again to have a sip of water.
00:14:55
Speaker 1: We are in conversation with Gary Goldman, who is the co-author, along with Marike Gresenhout and Liz Poppich, of the newly updated Field Guide to Mushrooms and Other Fungi of South Africa. It is the most beautifully put together book. The photography really makes you admire these fungi from a different perspective. It's like looking at a guide to wildflowers when you dig in and realize the massive diversity in shape, in color, in scent, in edible uses, etc. A few people are asking about storage of mushrooms and use of mushrooms. So Lauren's emailing to say, how soon after picking is it still safe to eat them? And how do you get better longevity out of them?
00:15:35
Speaker 2: When I do my mushroom forages, I try to advise people, I try to point them in the direction of cooking them on the same day. You can then put them into Tupperware and store it in the fridge for up to two days and Or you can put it in a Tupperware and store it in the deep freeze for up to two months. But you need to cook it before you do that. Okay. That's the sort of advice I try and give people. But it's different for each species. It's different. Each type of morphology of mushroom, like the bulliards. The bulliards are the ones which got sponge under the cap. They're far more firmer than the amanitas or the parasols or the field mushrooms. They're far more solid. So you can keep those for longer. So what I used to do when I first began, I used to, collect mushrooms for the restaurants and for the markets and for the celebrity chefs. And it's a well-paid job if you can find the mushrooms. Now it's crazy. Now everybody and the aunties found out about it. The cat's out of the bag. So I used to keep my porcinis because I used to find them on the Monday and I wanted to give them to the market on the Saturday. And each mushroom's got a shelf life. So the shelf life used to be three days. So how do you make it last for longer? So after... extensive reading and things, I found out that people in mostly Italy, they would store the mushroom, the boletus, with the soil on them.
00:16:54
Speaker 1: Around it, yeah.
00:16:55
Speaker 2: Still on it. Okay. And that gives it an extra one-day shelf life. They would store it in a cardboard box in a normal fridge of between, what's it, three to four degrees Celsius.
00:17:07
Speaker 1: Okay.
00:17:08
Speaker 2: And with a lid, like a cardboard box, like a shoe box is perfect. Yeah. Put your mushrooms in there and you can keep it for a day or two longer. Yeah. But what people must be aware of is that there's other fungi in the forest attacking these mushrooms. So after a day or two, you may feel that your mushrooms turn a different color or it's got sort of a spidey web look around it. That's just another fungus that is growing on it. You don't know what that fungus is. You don't know if it's possibly toxic. So that's why I say with the wild mushrooms, you want to cook it.
00:17:41
Speaker 1: Immediately.
00:17:42
Speaker 2: The same day.
00:17:43
Speaker 1: Until you get home.
00:17:44
Speaker 2: The same day. Cook them all. I normally say, what you do, because when we finish a forage, I say, look through my basket. I say, no, no, I'm not doing that. Because sometimes the basket's full and you can't see everything. So I say, when you get home, you put them out on the table and you put them into the same species in the same piles. Yeah. Each pile, different species, so you can see which species they are. And then you cook each one separately, so you can see if you like it or not. I have the same way that I do it every time. I would fry them up in butter. Yeah. And then I'd put some of them onto a slice of toast and the other slice of toast, a nice soft fried egg and a cup of moor coffee, which is filter coffee. And those three as a combination, it's just like heaven.
00:18:25
Speaker 1: Breakfast of champions. It sounds amazing.
00:18:27
Speaker 2: So every time I find a new species, that's exactly how I do it.
00:18:30
Speaker 1: Okay. On toast with a fried egg and some moor coffee. Sounds like heaven. Very important question. Does one need a permit to go foraging for mushrooms?
00:18:38
Speaker 2: It depends where you go. But when it comes to a national park, yes, you do need a permit. Okay. And permits are obtainable through sandparks. They normally issue a permit. They used to issue it every month. And then if you were in time, you got a permit. And if you weren't in time, you didn't get a permit. Now they will issue you with a permit from the 1st of April to the end of August. And even when it rains in December again, I contact them and say, listen, it's raining. Mushrooms will be out in two weeks' time. Can you issue me with another permit? They issue me with a permit. So they're very doable. Just a matter of making sure you contact them before you Go and walk. Because if you're caught without a permit, they used to fine people two and a half thousand rand. Okay. But doctors and lawyer friends of mine who got these fines and they couldn't sign the admission of guilt at the back, which means they'll have a criminal record, they would go to court. And when they got to the court, the judge would look at this and say, what is this? And tear it up. So it was a useless piece of paper. But still, they were issuing for two and a half thousand rand. which is a lot for.
00:19:39
Speaker 1: A lot of people. So do it the right way. Get the permit first.
00:19:41
Speaker 2: Get the permit.
00:19:42
Speaker 1: And then go foraging. Or go early.
00:19:44
Speaker 2: Okay.
00:19:44
Speaker 1: And at the end of the day, when you take your mushrooms home, then pick up a copy of the Field Guide to Mushrooms and Other Functions. to help you identify them and make sure you're only eating the ones that are safe. Gary, thanks. Always fascinating to chat to you. I can see your passion for the subject never wanes. We have a copy of Gary's book to give away. So if you would like to win a copy, send us a WhatsApp to 0725671567. with your name and the word fungi, please, on our WhatsApp line. And the first person to do that will win a copy of the brand new field guide valued at 590 Rand. It is available in stores now. Gary, fascinating to chat to you. Thanks for joining me today.
00:20:20
Speaker 2: It's just gone up to 620.
00:20:21
Speaker 1: Just gone up to 620.
00:20:22
Speaker 2: Don't wait.
00:20:24
Speaker 1: Get your WhatsApp through in a hurry.
