Pretty in Black

So Maggie the Wonder Dog and I decided spur of the moment to take a run down to coastal California in search of one of my favorite mushrooms, Craterellus cornucopioides aka the black trumpet or Trompette de la Mort. They look like little black petunias and have a good strong earthy taste. Affectionately referred to as the "poor man's truffle", these black relatives to the chanterelle family are both stunning to look at but will flavor a dish very nicely.

We took off Friday morning around 11 am and headed straight down highway 97 all the way to the CA boarder just south of Klamath Falls. We passed an interesting area where thousands and thousands of white swans were enjoying the beautiful morning on the water but unfortunately there was nowhere to pull off the road for a photo. Continuing south we could see Mount Shasta in our sights. Wow, what a sight!

After stopping to see old friends at the Fly Shop in Redding where it was a balmy 70 degrees, I pushed on all the way to the little community off I-5 called Williams. What a cute town....from there it was another 2.5 hours over to Fort Bragg on the coast and mushroom heaven.

Black trumpets are not the easiest thing to spot in the woods but once you get your eyes dialed in and focused on what to look for, you start to notice them a lot easier. Since often they are growing out of black mud, they blend right into their surroundings and are rather invisible. When you can find them growing in green moss, they are easy to spot.

The host trees to look for with this mushroom are tanoak, chinkapin, madrone, manzanita and live oak.

Maggie and I managed to scour the forest floor and brought home a good amount of mushrooms to preserve and store for the future. All in all, a great weekend get away and beautiful weather to boot.

The Most Elusive Mushroom in Oregon

Craterellus cornucopioides

Man these are the doggone hardest mushrooms to find in this state. I've searched high and low and with absolutely NO success. I've had some pointers from people who are pickers who have found them around here in the past but with or without pointers I've had the same amount of success...NONE! So I had a proposition I just could not refuse. A commercial picker friend of a friend from my area contacted me and told me he had a spot he would essentially "give" me as it had no commercial value to him in terms of amounts of mushrooms to harvest, but if I was only looking to find some for my own enjoyment and use he would take me right to them and show me what habitat to look for.

It was a great learning experience since I'm still having trouble with some of my Oregon trees and he showed me some tricks to learn some of my different firs and one tree I'd heard of but never seen (that I knew of) a golden chinkapin, which seems to be key to finding black trumpets. We were in white fir, madrone and the occasional chinkapin and they were always near the chinkapin.

Anyway, we hiked like a couple of llamas (or pack mules..take your pick) up and down ridges and into bowl like areas and finally we got to his spot (which in a million years I would NOT have found) unless I had a very good GPS unit and even then... and there they were. Just as I remembered them in CA...almost invisible with their background but growing like black petunias. It was a tough hike but well worth it with the bounty we picked. At the same time we found some yellowfoot chants and a scant few belly button hedgehogs. Yippeee...
I'm so excited to have fresh black trumpets. This winter I've been consumed by and preoccupied with black fungi. I've had black truffles on the brain for months as well as black trumpets so now it's time to celebrate. I feel a pizza coming in my near future. My two favorite mushrooms to put on pizza, yellowfoot and black trumpets. See my pizza blog right here. I think a risotto is in order real soon also! Hmm hedgehog and black trumpet risotto with truffles. I'm so spoiled!