Glögger: A Mushroom Apprenticeship

Backyard mushrooms

This summer and fall seasons have been pretty rainy but rather than get all depressed about how soggy the ground is, Swedes have been leveraging the unusually high rainfall to yield some delicious meals. I'm talking about mushrooms and I'm talking specifically about chanterelle mushrooms. Sweden has a law that actually allows people to roam the land and pick mushrooms, blueberries, raspberries, camping, hiking, skiing, or pretty much whatever you want as long as it's legal It's the Right to Public Access and it gives you the right to roam and wander and sit on a rock in the countryside if you want. It's not considered trespassing within certain limits. For instance, you can't camp out in someone's front yard right in front of their house. However, if someone lives on an island, you can camp on their island as long as they can't see you from their house (I believe that is the rule).

This quote is from the website http://www.naturvardsverket.se which has an English page so even non-Swedes can enjoy this unique privilege.

Swedes tend to regard the Right of Public Access as part of their cultural heritage, sometimes even as a national symbol. Its origins go back in part to provincial laws and customs dating from the Middle Ages.

The Right of Public Access is for everybody. (The literal meaning of the Swedish term, allemansrätten, is ‘everyman’s right’.) As the basis of our right to roam the countryside, it is important not just to individuals but also to clubs and tourism operators. Clubs and tourism operators may take advantage of the Right of Public Access in the activities they organise, even though the right as such applies only to individuals and not to groups.

Pretty cool right? Well, this right covers mushroom picking and believe me, there are a lot of mushrooms to pick. However, Jon and I are not seasoned mushroom pickers and the chances of us picking something poisonous has been too high to risk. We've been mushroom-less haps and have been feeling extremely inadequate since we have seen our neighbors coming back from the forest with BAGS and BAGS of delicious mushrooms.

Surprisingly, the internet was not much help and it was filled with too many caveats to trust their advice. We needed a real Swede to show us how to do this. The biggest problem is that no Swede will share their secrets. Something I learned early on was to never ask a Swede where they found those mushrooms. They won't tell you. Without being in the fold, we were lost. Jon told me, "We need to have someone take us out. We'll give them ALL the mushrooms, we just need to know what to look for." Enter our graciously nice neighbor, Lena, who not only offered to take us mushroom picking but also gave us her own bag to start off. Beyond nice!! We finally had our own mushroom apprenticeship!

Lena, wisely, taught us only to pick chanterelles. She also advised us to stay away from the "pretty mushrooms." Those are always toxic.

Too pretty to eat = toxic!

She took us all out on the hunt and told us that chanterelles could be found everywhere. Well, that is helpful but it means you have to cover a lot of ground. Mushroom picking is also about changing your perspective. They are very difficult to see from standing position, so you have to squat down and scan the ground like a horizon. Then, all of a sudden, you see tons of mushrooms. Now to pick the right ones.

Chanterelles, at this point in the season, are brown in color and have two distinct features (that I rely heavily on). They have a hole in the middle and a hollow stem. There are many "impostor" mushrooms that are quite dangerous to eat, so you have to double check. I was squishing the stem of every chanterelle I picked to make sure it was hollow. The other mushrooms don't have that tell-tale hollowness, which meant, look but don't eat.

We had actually found quite a number of mushrooms. It was a good harvest and we lucked out with some patches that hadn't been picked over yet. The beauty of mushrooms is that they grow so quickly, so you can come back in a week and find new ones to enjoy!

We also learned how to properly prepare fresh mushrooms. The ones you get in the store are pretty dry by the time they get into your kitchen, but these were straight from the forest. Before you add butter, you have to add them to a hot pan and remove all of the water. The water bubbles out of them and they kind of "dance" in the pan. It was very exciting and the smell of cooking mushrooms is always super delicious. Then, I added a generous scoop of butter, salt and pepper and cooked them in batches so that they didn't overlap on top of one another. We put them on buttered toasted bread and enjoyed some chanterelle sandwiches. DELICIOUS! We can't wait to go mushroom scouting this weekend!