This post begins with a guilty pleasure: cooking shows. Netflix’s Chef’s Table (highly recommended), Hell’s Kitchen (a last vestige of the cesspool of reality TV), and Kitchen Nightmares (very much the cesspool of reality TV and, to wit, cancelled a few years back): these are my guilty pleasures. It is an unabashed vice of mine. Watching such cooking shows deceives me into thinking I can cook.
I can cook.
*I really can’t*
A caveat: I’ve mastered the crockpot. I can cook a decent steak. I’ve a soft spot for seafood, particularly clams and mussels (I am a lowly grad student after all, and so I cannot afford the regular delicacies of lobster or langoustines). I talk myself a good game. Those who eat my cooking—my gracious though often unwilling victims—would attest to this claim otherwise.
If it’s not clear by now, I fancy myself a burgeoning gourmand. If it’s not clear by now, this fancy is but a pipedream.
But I can, and forever will, be able to fry up mushrooms. Give me some morels, and I can make a believer of a mushroom agnostic.
***
Once upon a time, a young boy scoured a back-acre plot of land. He was warned of the evil witch that lived deep in the woods. He knew of the dangers of venturing so far out beyond the boundaries.
This is the land my mother grew up on. The land my grandparents escaped to following the race riots of Detroit in the ‘60s. A land made haven.
The horses are long gone now. The small hobby farm put to rest. But there was life left in these hills. Fawns resting beneath shady oaks. Moss persisting despite the lack of wetlands. And the mushrooms. The morels, the beefsteaks: the harvest.
***
Let’s count out the beefsteaks first—it won’t take long. While their size makes it seem worth a cook’s time, they carry a certain burden…legend says that one in a hundred are poisonous. Not that this has deterred me from trying them before. Their size relative to the golden mushroom standard of morels has convinced me before that the risk might just be worth the cost-benefit that so many mushroom hunters weigh in on with every venture. So, yes, I’ve enjoyed beefsteaks before, and while their taste is comparable to the real prize—sautéing in butter is, after all, the great culinary equalizer—beefsteaks are almost too easily found, too willing to be foraged. Where’s the chase? What’s left in the hunt?
***
So onto the morels. Oh, Lordy, those morels. In my estimation, they are the pinnacle of umami, of savory taste, with all of the satisfaction of a Sunday roast in a single bite.
They emerge in late April and, if we’re lucky, early May. With a few days of rain followed by a healthy dose of sunshine, the small caps of the mushrooms peek out on the forest floor. Mushroom hunters have their own tricks of the trade, though my grandpa swore that uneven hilly plots prove the most reliable. And in this topography, the shade of trees harbor the spores until they are ready to bloom.
***
A Fool-Proof Instructional Recipe:
- Find a location that looks promising for morels to grow. Do not trespass: landowners look down on this practice in general, but mushroom-hunting landowners take it to the next level.
- Walk the land with your eyes to the ground. When you find the morels, pick the morels, but be sure to leave the bottom of the stem to ensure returning interest the next year.
- Place them in a bag. Mesh is the standard, since the morels can sprinkle spores through the holes. (Using Meijer plastic bags will result in swift disdain and severe judgment.)
- Bring them home and place in a pot of water. Sprinkle with salt. Let the salt and water clean out the morels of any dirt and, sometimes, small bugs (but trust me, it’s all worth it).
- Drain the mushrooms, patting dry with a paper towel.
- Heat butter in a sauce pan. When the butter is melted, add mushrooms. Sauté the morels until a light golden brown. Remove from heat and enjoy. No additional pepper, salt, or additional seasoning is necessary.
- Savor.
Jacob Schepers (Calvin ’12) is the author of A Bundle of Careful Compromises (2014), a winner of the 2013 Outriders Poetry Project competition. His poetry has appeared in Verse, The Common, PANK, The Destroyer, and others. He lives in South Bend, IN, with his wife, Charis, and two sons, Liam and Oliver. He is both an MFA student and doctoral candidate in English at the University of Notre Dame.
