Preparing toadstools for the table should begin while collecting them. Have a soft brush, a knife, half a dozen one or two-pound paper bags and an open-topped, roomy, shallow basket. |Collecting. Cleansing.|As edible species are found, cut them loose well above their attachment. Keep the spore surface down until the top is brushed clean and every particle of dirt removed from the stem. This prevents dirt from getting upon the spore surface, from which it is very hard to dislodge. Never clean a toadstool over other toadstools. If the stem is hard, tough or wormy, remove it.
Having cleaned the plant, place it in one of the paper bags, spore surface down. Write its name on the bag. Place but one kind in the same bag, unless species of about the same texture and flavor are found and mixing is not objectionable. Where another species is found, give it a bag to itself.
Select fresh, inviting plants only. Do all possible cleaning in the field. |Selection|Plants keep clean, pack better, and more of them can be carried. A careless jumble is gritty, bruised and disappointing.
If not ready to cook the find, place the bags in the ice chest. It is best to cook fungi as soon as possible. Cooked, they can be kept much longer than when uncooked.
When ready to cook, wash the plants by throwing them into a deep pan of water. |Washing.|Pass the fingers quietly through them upward; let stand a moment for the dirt to settle, then gather them from the water with the fingers as a drain. Remove any scurf or adhering dirt with a coarse flannel or a cloth. Wash in this way through two or three waters. Lay to drain. By experience in draining, exactly the amount of water necessary to cook a particular species can be allowed to remain within its spore surface, if it is a gilled species. To other kinds, water must usually be added.
The removal of the skin of any toadstool is seldom justifiable. As with the apple and most fruits, the largest amount of flavor is in the skin.
By the consistency of the species in hand, decide upon the best method of cooking it and the time and medium required. If it is thin, juicy, tender, from five to ten minutes' slow stewing will be ample; if it is thick, dry, tough, from thirty to forty minutes will be required. After any species is cooked tender, it may be seasoned to one’s liking and served as one chooses.
Many species, which absolutely refuse to become tender after prolonged stewing, quickly succumb in the frying pan and make crisp, delicate morsels. Edible kinds which dry well, or are hard when found, often grate or powder easily, and are excellent (after soaking) made into soups, fritters or pâtés.
Hundreds upon hundreds of recipes for cooking the common mushroom and the few other fungi heretofore eaten, are at hand. The simpler methods—those which retain the natural flavor of the species cooked—are the best.
When a species has good body, and but little flavor, it may be made delicious by cooking with it another species of higher flavor.