This program features a mushroom hunt day out in Avondale House, Co Wicklow which was Charles Stewart Parnell’s home. The grounds have a huge variety of trees and therefore loads of mushrooms.

Out of all the photos and mushrooms I saw on the hunt this one is my favorite. I found and picked one of these and even Bill got quite excited by the find! I just love the colour of them and when you cut into the flesh it reacts to the oxygen in the air which turns the yellow flesh to blue reminding me of mackerel skin for some reason. This colour scheme darkens further when cooked on the pan.
A magical mushroom with personality, not the psycho-active stuff!!

The program begins with Bill O’Dea (www.mushroomstuff.com) giving a slide show and telling the group of about 40 adults and children all about mushrooms.

We then go out for two and a half hours with baskets to hunt for any mushrooms we can find, edible or poisonous, and bring them back to base for identification after lunch.

Various edible mushrooms which were purchased are then fried up on pans as well as a few wild mushrooms which the experts are positive are safe and tasty.

Everyone gets to try some of the different varieties while speculating about some of the mushrooms that are in the baskets.

After lunch in Avondale House its back down to the hall where mushroom experts Howard Fox and Maria Cullen reveal all….

If you would like to go on a mushroom hunt or find out where to start building your knowledge about mushrooms then please check out Bill’s website www.mushroomstuff.com

You can now download Program 9 of the 10 part series here:

“Grow it, Cook it, Eat it” Program 9 The mushroom hunt

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Thanks for visiting the website and remember to come back for the last program in this 10 part series!

Michael Lemass

Mushroomstuff.com’s Mushroom Hunt, Avondale House, County Wicklow, Ireland.

Mushroom hunting can be considered one of the most dangerous sports around. Crocodile wrestling and bungee jumping just pale into insignificance beside it …. and there is always the potential reward of ending up with a really tasty meal!

After Bill’s slide show and crash course in the world of mushrooms we all grabbed our baskets and went out around the grounds and woods of Avondale House to see what we could find….

I spent the first 30 minutes looking for mushrooms but I don’t think they wanted me to find them!
“Dont come around here no more, whatever your looking for” sang Tom Petty sitting on a mushroom… but I think that song was about a woman not mushrooms.

If you go down in the woods today you’re sure of a lot of suprising mushrooms!
There are in there somewhere…

After 30 minutes of fruitless walking around I came across some fellow mushroom hunters who had managed to slow to the required speed and level of patience to find some of the thousands of mushrooms that grow in Ireland.

And a few minutes later down the road they found more, totally different, mushrooms

A fine specimen of bracket fungus – I think it’s a beefsteak or else it’s the one that artists use to carve designs on?

Same angle without the camera’s flash

The flipside

Stairway to heaven?

Down at the base in a hollow

View from below reveals the white underneath

Close up patterns like tidal marks on a sandy beach

Yet another specimen

Same one I think as the one above

View from below

Bill’s basket. Note the little red one bottom right which we tasted to experience the fungal version of hot chilli and that explains the spitting sound in the program…

Wow depth of field on a little digital camera! I like!!
The steady hand of Bill

Key to identification is looking underneath the cap. Here we can see gills which contrary to an ill-informed popular belief is not a good sign. Gills bad! Except in supermaket!!

This was the bracket fungus I spotted. Bill stood on my shoulders and that combined reach potential of about 15 foot wasted no time harvesting this specimen

Closer

Bill at full stretch for a potential chicken of the forest
Alas it wasn’t to be

The power of zoom…..

Usually seen in big clusters could this be a lone Honey Fungus?

More of them in situ

“Amanita muscaria” more often called “Fly Agaric”, the mushroom Santa Claus has to thank for his colours. This one is a bit dried and withered, well past its sell-by date but still showing the classic red skin with white spots

This is the mushroom I saw in the hedge and climbed in after it. Here Bill has broken a piece off to show me the yellow flesh turning blue on contact with the oxygen in the air. I thought it was magic!!

Without the flash

One of the collection baskets – great variety

Huge white thing, like a cloud became a mushroom

With camera flash

A mushroom in the basket is worth a lot more than one up a tree out of reach, right?

Some of the mushrooms purchased for cooking up at lunchtime – chanterelles?

King Oyster was the tastiest by most people’s taste buds

A wild basket of colours, shapes, smells and textures

Identification is key and its always good to have an expert on hand as opposed to a hopefull, hungry opinion

When we cut it open it was full of black spores which wasn’t a good sign but an impressive sight all the same

Lunch or death? What other food offers that range of potential?

Basketfull of yet to be identified potential

Great colours

Mostly Honey Fungus I think?

A funny pair. Looks like the slugs had some fun with these …. shamanic slugs?

Bill O’Dea starts cooking as the hungry hunters hover

Keep it simple – heat, pan, butter, King Oyster

Slicing them up, before their 10 to 15 minutes boiling in the pan in water then to be finished by frying. Wonderful colour!

I like the texture of the finger, the knife and the mushroom

The pile grows below

Inky

Hunters awaiting reward

All mushrooms have to be cooked properly

Keep ‘em movin’

2 pans on the go

Dying for some fried mushrooms

Hot but tasty

Washing them down…

We like mushrooms

intrepid and very talented Mycoexplorer Wojciech Chmura

Shades of brown…

Cant get enough of those mushrooms…

Wine and mushrooms a nice combination but there is one variety of wild mushroom where one has to be careful combining alcohol with

Shrooms from above

Happy with anticipation

Once identified and cooked the last safety check is to taste a bit of those inky looking mushrooms

Wojciech looks on as Bill tries

They turned out to be bitter so Wojciech knew something was wrong and that a dodgy mushroom must have gotten into the mix.
The whole contents of the pan were thrown away! Can’t really take any chances!!

Bill’s wife Frieda on the left who is a Slow Foodie too

The spongy underside of the mushroom’s cap.
Reminds me of a sponge or a piece of coral

Maria Cullen is very happy to see this mushroom. Donal Carroll looks on

Same mushroom different angle

Donal listening to feedback from Maria about what he found

Another basket

Howard Fox, botanist/mycologist takes a closer look

Howard shares his thoughts

Howard moves onto the next unidentified fungal object

But what’s this? A morel?

Another basket

I think this is Honey Fungus, edible for humans and bad for trees so Avondale were happy that we were picking it

Just when you thought you’d seen all the colours a mushroom can be the little purple ones appear!

Pretty but they might kill you!

Wojciech’s other half cooking for the hungry hunters!

Cooking em up

Red is dead!

Baby puffballs?

Red

Back down at the hall identifying what was found that morning

Maria tells us more about them

I was impressed by the variety of mushrooms and their shape and colour

Closer

Some chanterelles Maria brought along

Gills

More honey fungus?

Beefsteak???

Honey fungus just starting off???

2 whole tables like this were covered in fungi

They look nice but would you eat them?

Would they eat you?

Could be tasty?

This is the phallic Stink Horn?

Probably not edible

Maria must be grinning at the sheer size of it. I think it’s a parasol mushroom but Im no expert!

Honey fungus I think?

Checking to see if chanterelles smell of apricots!

Double checking!

Triple checking!

Our mushroom experts Howard, Maria, Wojciech

Maria working her way through the table.

Howard, Maria, Wojciech

The other table!

Ornamental mushrooms on sale.

Honey fungus and a parasol behind!

A parasol?

The view from above it.

At the restaurant in Avondale House.