Articles

Mushrooming with the Merry Monk

One cool, overcast Saturday in October, eleven intrepid souls and I went mushroom hunting in the Malahat with Brother Michael, a Benedictine monk from the Sole Dao Monastery. The Great Fall Mushroom Hunt, as it was called, began at The Aerie Resort, a luxurious Relais & Chateaux property in Canada’s Cowichan Valley on Vancouver Island.

The dozen mushroom foragers are a mixed lot of newbies and more experienced hunters. I am the absolute novice, a city girl who’s rarely been off concrete, much less risked life and limb in a mossy, overgrown forest studded with sharp stumps and god-knows-what sort of wildlife underfoot.

Brother Michael shows up for the hunt dressed in a bright yellow rain slicker, gray sweatshirt, and navy Dockers. No cassocks or birettas in sight. A wiry man with aviator-style glasses, he only half-jokingly warns us we will have to don blindfolds so we won’t discover the path to his secret mushroom patches.

The forest is surprisingly serene. The reverent voices of Brother Michael and my companions are the only sounds that spoil the quiet. As we get farther from the gravel path and deeper into the woods, the air takes on a peculiar chill, scented with the sweet odor of decaying pine needles and rich soil. I quickly understand why mushrooms, organisms that “feed” on decomposing animals and leaves, have a field day in this dark, dank atmosphere.

“Mushrooms are everywhere, once you start looking,” Brother Michael coaxes.

“Where are the magic mushrooms?” someone in the group calls out, and there’s a collective chuckle.

Brother Michael started mushrooming years ago, gradually learned the various “safe” and “unsafe” local species, and over time began selling his spoils to local restaurants as a source of income for the monastery. He’s found the best places to find mushrooms are under salal bushes, under or near logs, under fir trees, or around old fir stumps. More pragmatically, you find mushrooms “where the mushrooms are, and where there haven’t been a lot of people.”

The good Brother, who likes to chop wood, read, pray, and practice tai chi in his spare time, really has an eye for stalking his prey. Like a miner panning for gold nuggets, he turns up golden chanterelles and plump boletes at practically every soft step. For the uninitiated, he demonstrates how to gently pull back any underbrush, and cut the mushrooms near, but not at, ground level. This procedure saves the mycelium so the mushrooms can spring up again.

Once cut, he urges his fellow foragers to make sure the mushroom is firm and the gills are not slimy, indications of old or insect-infested specimens. Clean the mushrooms with the tip of the knife, and put them in your bucket clean: less work later on when you want to cook them!

Christophe Letard, the boyish executive chef at The Aerie, often joins hotel guests for the fall mushroom hunts since he and his staff are charged with creating a two-hour, three-course, mushroom-based lunch after the hunt and the number and types of mushrooms available change from week to week.

“I was the last one of six boys, so ended up cooking with Mommy a lot,” he explains in a heavy French accent when asked his reasons for becoming a professional chef. Growing up on a farm in rural Normandy surrounded by cows, pigs, chicken, vegetables, fruits, and grains, his mother’s simple, healthy food inspired Christophe’s lifelong search for the best local ingredients.

Like Brother Michael, Chef Christophe has a sixth sense for finding mushrooms. His bucket is full of interesting “finds” that other hunters overlook. He’ll use the orange-lip fungi and other tiny edible mushrooms he’s collected to compose pretty plate presentations. 

Back at The Aerie, our group is seated at a long, linen-covered table. We recount our three-hour hunt in great detail and with great bravado, as though we have just returned from a risky African safari stalking wildebeests and rhinoceroses.
Weathervane Scallops with Truffle Ravioli, Forest Mushrooms, and Mushroom Foam soothe our souls. Free-Range Chicken Breast with Chanterelle Cream shows off our morning booty to perfection. Pumpkin Crème Brulée with Hot Chocolate banishes every last cold bone and damp digit in our bodies.

There’s an old mushroom-hunter’s joke that I never would never have understood before experiencing the Great Fall Mushroom Hunt. A woman on a ferryboat spots a man cautiously guarding a bag overflowing with chanterelles.

“Where did you go mushroom hunting?” she asks.

“In the Okanagan,” he replies. 

The Aerie
P.O. Box 108
Malahat, British Columbia V0R 2L0
Canada
(250) 743-7115
aerie.bc.ca