MUSHROOMS ARE THE GIFT of the forest. On the luckiest of days they spread out between the trees like meadow flowers—yellow, red, russet, white, blue, gray. Whether you are out on one of these days, or on a day in which the mushrooms are hiding, every hunt has the feel of a treasure hunt—of picking up jewels from the forest floor.

To the subsistence farmer, mushrooms provide a valuable source of nutrition. This is as true in Europe as it is in Africa or Asia. The fanatical devotion of many European cultures towards dried Boletus edulis (Italian porcini) is a carryover from the time when wild mushrooms were a food that farmers relied upon for protein.

As cultures get richer they tend to consume ever fewer species of mushrooms. I am interested in which mushrooms people in a given culinary culture consider the most wonderful, and what are the classic preparations associated with each favorite mushroom. Which mushrooms are considered best, or among the best, is far from universal. In fact, some cultures enjoy mushrooms that other groups deem to be poisonous. For example, Russians go out their way to pick Russula emetica, —they pickle it, —while most European and American mushroom cultures go out of their way to avoid it, considering it poisonous.

The photograph of the fire, above, was taken in Xishuangbanna, the southern portion of China’s Yunnan province, near the Burmese border. One way our hosts prepared mushrooms was to first roast the cap directly on the embers, then to cut it up and pound it in a mortar with garlic and chili. This is pungent paste is used as condiment with rice, and is particularly popular during the hottest weather when rice is all there is to eat and heat suppresses appetite. It is a dish especially valued by older people as an appetite stimulant. Roasting mushroom caps directly on the embers is analogous to dry grilling. Cook on the embers beside the fire in your fireplace or campfire, or use embers in the barbecue. The embers should be dusted with ash to cool them slightly. Use the stem of the mushroom as a handle. Salt the gills lightly, and cook slowly. washing coral mushrooms

Mushrooms collected in the wild are often dirty. Everywhere outside of cookbook culture mushrooms are washed in water to get them clean. In the photograph at left coral mushrooms are being washed in water by two women in Xishuanbanna. In China, and elsewhere, the most common way to cook mushrooms brought in after a hunt is to sauté them in oil with salt. There are, of course, variations. In Russia and much of the Europe’s very far north sour cream and dill are added. In China other ingredients are often included, a few greens, as in the photograph of the woman in blue, or a little meat.

In much of China wood is scarce and cooking tends to be over a very hot fire for a very short period of time. The woman in this picture is cooking mushrooms in a wok over what is obviously very high heat. She collects mushrooms, greens, and wood from the forest, and grows rice on a plot four kilometers from her house. Her house is on stilts. A couple pigs live underneath.

In many ways the pattern of her life is the same as that of country families I know in Lithuania. There is, in both cases, the reliance on a staple starch— rice or potato— the importance of pigs for meat, and, during the season, the importance of mushrooms and other wild foods from the forest.