The Mushroom Hunters
On the Trail of an Underground America
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- 9,99 €
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- 9,99 €
Beschreibung des Verlags
“A beautifully written portrait of the people who collect and distribute wild mushrooms . . . food and nature writing at its finest.”—Eugenia Bone, author of Mycophilia
“A rollicking narrative . . . Cook [delivers] vivid and cinematic scenes on every page.”—The Wall Street Journal
In the dark corners of America’s forests grow culinary treasures. Chefs pay top dollar to showcase these elusive and enchanting ingredients on their menus. Whether dressing up a filet mignon with smoky morels or shaving luxurious white truffles over pasta, the most elegant restaurants across the country now feature one of nature’s last truly wild foods: the uncultivated, uncontrollable mushroom.
The mushroom hunters, by contrast, are a rough lot. They live in the wilderness and move with the seasons. Motivated by Gold Rush desires, they haul improbable quantities of fungi from the woods for cash. Langdon Cook embeds himself in this shadowy subculture, reporting from both rural fringes and big-city eateries with the flair of a novelist, uncovering along the way what might be the last gasp of frontier-style capitalism.
Meet Doug, an ex-logger and crabber—now an itinerant mushroom picker trying to pay his bills and stay out of trouble; Jeremy, a former cook turned wild-food entrepreneur, crisscrossing the continent to build a business amid cutthroat competition; their friend Matt, an up-and-coming chef whose kitchen alchemy is turning heads; and the woman who inspires them all.
Rich with the science and lore of edible fungi—from seductive chanterelles to exotic porcini—The Mushroom Hunters is equal parts gonzo travelogue and culinary history lesson, a fast-paced, character-driven tour through a world that is by turns secretive, dangerous, and quintessentially American.
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Intrepid and inspired, Seattle-based author Cook (Fat of the Land) follows his passion for porcini, chanterelles, and black trumpets into remote forests, from the Pacific Northwest to Colorado, where mild fungi fruit in abundance and are hunted in secret and traded like contraband. The mushroom hunters he joins are like the gold prospectors of the Wild West: secretive men with sharp survival skills, who intimately know the terrain and can endure brutal days bushwhacking for an itinerant hand-to-mouth existence. The hunters pick different species, depending on the season from hedgehogs (which might go for $7 per pound) to king bolete and matsutake amassing pounds of mushrooms to sell. The author trails veteran harvester Doug Glen Carnell through the coastal Olympic Peninsula. A favorite buyer is Jeremy Faber, owner of Foraged and Found Edibles, who has connections with the fancy restaurants in Seattle and New York; he inspects the day's hauls and tallies the prices. The hunters venture into coastal California in winter, picking yellow feet, among others; they even come upon a cornucopia of "burn morels," which emerge after forest fires. Cook amply, knowledgeably incorporates debates about sustainability and legality, and offers recipes.