ShareThisThe first rule for newbie mushroom hunters is this: Be persistent when asking to tag along with an experienced mushroom hunter.
I had been pestering chef Fredi Morf, a culinary-school instructor at Wake Technical Community College in Raleigh, N.C., to take me mushroom-hunting since last summer. At the time, I was a student in Morf's baking class.
One day he brought in a bounty of chanterelle mushrooms. When he sauteed them for the class to taste, I was smitten. The chanterelles were rich and earthy and unlike anything I had ever tasted.
That sealed it for me. I begged. I was pushy. I promised never to reveal his mushroom-hunting locations.
But Morf, like most mushroom hunters, I suspect, was reticent about inviting me along. He took my cell-phone number but never called.
That was until a recent Monday. I met up with him, and we wandered into the woods looking for tulip-poplar trees, under which morels tend to grow. Morf explained that morel season lasts from the end of March to the end of April.
(One note to those worried about confusing morels with deadly mushrooms. There are false morels, which don't look very much like a morel and are not hollow inside. My best advice: Go mushroom hunting with someone whose experience you trust.)
As Morf and I stared intently at the forest floor, he said, "Until you see that first one, they can be right between your feet and you won't see them."
It was several minutes before Morf spotted his first morel: a small yellow one with a wavy, almost-honeycomb cap.
"The saying is there's never just one," Morf said before spotting his second.
Once my eyes knew what to look for -- that telltale textured cap -- they were drawn to each pinecone and sweetgum ball on the ground.
Several minutes down the path, I found my first morel. Morf looked at my first find and yelled, "Holy cow! Turn around." Under a log behind me was a beautiful four-inch morel. He let me keep it.
Morf was right. Once my eyes tuned into the morels, they were everywhere. The interview notes I was taking petered out when we found a profusion on a hillside in a tulip-poplar grove. The last notes I have are Morf exclaiming: "There's another one. There's another one."
I ended up with about two dozen, some tiny and others large, although none was as big as the one found under the log.
That night, a friend sauteed the morels in butter, and we ate them spooned on slices of French bread. My friend licked the mushroom bowl afterward.
That captures my sentiment exactly. I can't wait to go hunting again.
To learn more about hunting morels, Morf recommends this Web site, www.morels.com
(Andrea Weigl can be reached at andrea.weigl(at)newsobserver.com)
(Distributed by Scripps Howard News Service, www.scrippsnews.com.)
Must credit The News and Observer of Raleigh, N.C.
