 |
| Chicken of the Wood with agave pickles and garden greens for a complete foraged burger Mans |
When searching for Chicken of the Wood it seems the harder
you look the less likely you are to find any. It’s when you are absent-mindedly
driving home, that a dash of color and texture will catch your eye and THERE
it’ll be, an orangey-yellow cluster of happiness stuck to a rotting tree. How could everybody
have missed it???
 |
| It's like somebody has stuck a chunk of corral reef to a tree UHG |
 |
| There it was, right on the road home from foraging at the my local supermarket Dave Glass |
Polyporus Sulphureus or Chicken of the Wood is a saprophyte,
as the name suggests it gets its nutrients from the sap-wood (heart wood) of
trees. When you see a tree with ‘brown cube rot’ (you’ll know what I mean when
you see it) keep an eye out for this delicious parasite that is slowly killing
many of our trees, leaving their trunks hollow.
 |
| A generous basting of olive oil, some seasoning and quick once over on the griddle UHG |
A splendid things about this fungi, is that it makes its
glorious annual appearance when all the other mushrooms are hiding from the
heat, ‘They can smell the coming rain,’ says my friend Gary Goldman, The Mushroom Guru.
 |
| Add bit of home-made mayo for large amounts of happiness UHG |
As they get older, their lively colors fade to white and
they become too dry and tough to eat, so it’s the vibrant ones that are juicy. It’s uncanny how much like chicken in taste and texture they are.
Remarkably, there is another bracket fungi called Beefsteak of the Woods; there
are no prizes for guessing their taste and texture. True gifts of nature…
except if you are a tree, especially an oak tree.
 |
| Beefsteak of the Wood UHG |
 |
| It is hard to believe that these aren't cuts of beef UHG |
 |
| It looks like chicken, it taste chicken, but it's no chicken... Mans |
