Urban Forager | One Tasty City Mushroom
By AVA CHIN
Photographs by Ava Chin for The New York Times Wild enoki have a pretty deep-tan cap and flourish well into the cold months.Each fall brings up new unexpected surprises in the city for the amateur mycologist: hen-of-the-woods mushrooms growing under giant oak trees; a patch of honey mushrooms sprouting within throwing distance of unsuspecting joggers; giant puffballs sitting on Brooklyn hillsides. A few weeks ago I started discovering enoki mushrooms — first on tree stumps in upper Manhattan, then again on Staten Island.
Enoki (Flammulina velutipes), a k a winter mushroom, enokitake, velvet stem, or velvet foot, is a dark-orangey-brown gilled mushroom with an elongated velvety stem, and a cap that can grow to 2 inches wide. Like oyster mushrooms, enokis grow on dead wood and have a long season, even showing up throughout the winter.
In its wild form, enoki looks nothing like the ghostly white supermarket version, those long, thin crunchy fungi that are cultivated in the dark so they resemble something that aliens ejected from a spaceship.
From above, Flammulinae velutipes are deep-amber-brown to tawny-colored, and slimy-tacky to the touch. But underneath, their caps are light, whitish-gold, and clustered so close together that the first time I saw them growing on a stump in Inwood, they reminded me of the orientalized dancing mushrooms in “Fantasia” (though those animated fungi more closely resemble amanitas — if only Disney knew of Flammulina velutipes!) With careful inspection of the stem base, one can see immature enokis forming in perfect miniature like a collection of Russian nesting dolls.
Prized in Chinese, Japanese, and Korean cuisine where it is used in soups and stir-fries, enokis have been cultivated for hundreds of years. I add cultivated enokis to noodle soup for their lovely shape and crunchy texture, but I prefer the wild version, which tastes more mushroomy. Keep in mind, wild enokitake’s subtle flavor can be lost in anything cooked for more than 5 minutes (i.e., goat cheese and mushroom frittatas).
Draped over an arboreal shoulder like a rakish sweater.Be forewarned: foraging for gilled mushrooms can be dangerous and is not advised for beginners. I was lucky because my first enoki discovery was on a fungus tour led by experts from the New York Mycological Society, of which I am a member. (In fact, Gary Lincoff, author of the “National Audubon Society Field Guide to North American Mushrooms” and “The Complete Mushroom Hunter,” proclaimed my giant enoki the best-looking cluster he’d seen in the city, before snapping a picture.)
Wild enoki can easily be mistaken for poisonous mushrooms like the deadly galerina (Galerina autumnalis or Autumn galerina), a very common little brown mushroom that grows throughout North America, which also has tacky, brown caps and grows on wood. Unlike enoki, which has a white spore print, Galerina autumnalis has a ringed stalk and a telltale brown spore print. Deadly galerina’s no-joke side-effects include vomiting, diarrhea, kidney or liver failure, coma and death.
Back at home, I made a spore print of my sample, cutting the cap off its stem and placing it flat on a dark surface (in this case a black notepad), then turning a glass jar over the mushroom and leaving it undisturbed for 24 hours. The next day, upon removing the jar and mushroom, I was happy to discover a ghostly white spore print. Enokitake! That weekend, I made enoki-pancetta orecchiette in cream sauce, enoki frittata, and enokis with noodles and broth.
[Note: When it comes to fresh wild mushrooms, one must always do the following: consult experts to look them over, preferably in person (don’t just rely on pictures and email); make spore prints; and double-check with reliable mushroom guides.]
Ava Chin, a professor of creative nonfiction and journalism at the College of Staten Island, lives in Park Slope, Brooklyn. The Urban Forager appears every other Saturday.Urban Forager | Enoki, a Tasty City Mushroom - NYTimes.com
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