Here is an experience of eating an expensive mushroom for this #mushroommonday
This expensive mushroom is called Matsutake or pine mushroom. The latin name is Tricholoma matsutake.
I happened to notice these for sale at the local Asian supermarket.
Then I noticed the price on the back... YIKES these are super expensive!!! It breaks down to around $10 per mushroom. I figured with a price tag this steep they had to be good.
I did a bit of research on them and they are prized for their unique strong taste and texture. They are also very rare and can only be found in pine and fir forests. They are highly prized in Japan and are extra rare there now because of a pine killing worm that killed many of the trees they grow under, this is part of why they are so expensive.
I suspect the ones I bought at the store probably were found in a pine forest in the US possibly California or Colorado. They are still quite dirty and have to be cleaned carefully.
After cleaning them I peeled away most the dirt and top layer of skin and revealed the gills. They have a white spore print and after peeling off the skin they definitely had a distinct pine scent to them.
They have a really solid texture to them very similar to a king bolete. These are also one of the few mushrooms that can be eaten raw. I ate one of them raw and it had a sweet almost brown sugar taste to it with an aftertaste similar to what a pine forest smells like on a fresh morning day. I can see why they are so highly sought after.
I cooked the rest of them in a bit of olive oil with some salt and a tiny bit of pepper to keep the taste of the mushroom in the foreground. In most recipes I've looked up they tend to keep this mushroom isolated because of its strong taste because it is complex enough on its own.
While browning an almost campfire wood smell came out of them, I can see why the most popular way of cooking them is to just shish kabob them over an open flame. The toasted smell is a unique feature on its own. Once they were cooked they still had a nice firm texture, even more firm that a king bolete, but this time the pine taste was more smoky and the sweetness disappeared and was more like cinnamon. I suspect these would complement the taste of thin strips of beef really well on a shish kabob.
Next time I go to Colorado or California I'll have to time it so that I'm in a pine forest during the rainy season to maybe find these growing wild. I highly recommend getting some if you ever see them for sale in a store just for the unique taste experience.
hmmmmm, I wonder if these grow on the rainshadow side of Mt. Hood?
If there are pine or fir trees there it is possible, the trick with these is to look under all the pine needles most of the time these are hard to find because they are so dirty looking and are under all the roughage built up over time in the forest.
I'll look into it! We've finally started getting rain. Definitely plenty of pine trees.
Perfect I bet they are growing especially if its after a couple days of rain. You might need to bring a rake or something to brush away the stuff that covers them. If you don't find these then I'm sure some other fall mushroom will be growing, keep an eye out for bright orange lobster mushrooms.
Let me see if this works. I should have enough by now... !PIZZA
@corvidae, sorry! You need more $PIZZA to use this command.
The minimum requirement is 20.0 PIZZA liquid, and 0.0 PIZZA staked.
More $PIZZA is available from Hive-Engine or Tribaldex
It works I have a pine mushroom pizza now.
hehe. I guess I don't have enough virtual pizza to share. I'll order you a real one. With extra pine mushrooms. It'll only set me back about $150USD.
I have never heard of these before! You make me want to go find a Pine forest and get to hunting! Thanks for the details of the smells and flavors. One day when our Crypto moons then we can afford these babies all day every day! hahahah
neither me. pine / birch / oak forests are the best for searching good mushrooms, as far as I know.
I hope you have a decent Pine forest somewhere around you!
😎
Yes, i have seen first hand that the Beech and Birch forests have some incredible diversity of fungus. Here we have Piney wood forests in East Texas bordering up to Louisiana... but not in my area. =)
heh. my fungi photography is the art of available. I do not travel at all, living at metropolis almost all of the time. and still have gigabytes of photo-archive :) :) :) on some occasional encounters, quite a big part of them is happening at the city yards, park and lawns. ✌️
and here I have a !BEER for you. feeling like its Friday today! (was a lazy day at my office)
Thanks for the beer! I know what you mean about the art of availability! In my city there aren't many mushrooms unless you have an eye for it. Good thing you have such a nice collection of photos archived! =)
Cheers
View or trade
BEER.Hey @castleberry, here is a little bit of
BEERfrom @qwerrie for you. Enjoy it!Learn how to earn FREE BEER each day by staking your
BEER.These are only the price of two cosmos atoms lol. They were worth the price though I would rather spend $70 on gas to drive up to a pine forest to test my luck at finding them in the wild.
That is a great way of looking at it! Funny too....
That cat is driving right to the bank errr I mean the crypto exchange.
These are new to me I will have to keep an eye out for them.
They seem to be very seasonal. Late summer rains in a pine forest are their season in the wild and in the stores.
Thank you.
I love that you did a simple preparation to not overpower the mushroom @sketch.and.jam! You would think with a price tag like that then they would, at least, be sold a little cleaner but I guess it is what it is. You did a great job cleaning 'em up though! That last photo had me salivating..lol. 😋
me too! last two photos (and a macro fragment of cleaned part) are my faves. very very nice and successful food photo -- maybe it even could convince somebody to part with 70 dollars, hehe. idk!
Or we mushroom hunters could become rich if we look for them in the pine forests lol.
...but 1st we have to make investments -- buy visa and tickets to Japan, right?
:))))
Right or buy land and plant pine trees there then seed them with the spores from these mushroom lol.
I am not that finance-wise... but my residual economic knowledge in my head suggests that the law of supply and demand is at work here. If many do the same, the supply will increase significantly ... and the demand will remain unchanged. And the price will fall :(
And the key is to get it to the Japanese market where you can fetch the higher price in time before the mushrooms go bad... Everywhere else most people don't even know about this mushroom even though it grows in their area.
Yeah this mushroom is very powerful tasting all on its own. I've seen most recipes just keep them by themselves, sometimes cut thinly in a really basic soup broth but mostly grilled or shish kabobbed. They are almost good as a mild desert if not cooked at all since they taste sweet. Once grilled they lost sweetness and it becomes more like cinnamon or licorice (that's the closest way I can describe their taste) with an overlay of mushroom taste and pine forest lol.
This mushroom is very beautiful and very tasty to eat...
I hope to find them in the wild one day.