Hunting for Wild Mushrooms

When you think of Madrid, you think of the architecture, Retiro Park, the Prado, tapas, and many other things.  Wild mushrooms?  Not so much, but just over an hours drive from the city are mountains full of delicious setas or wild mushrooms.  You can buy these in vegetable stands, but I always thought it could be fun to try to find them in the wild.  I have been interested in learning about wild mushrooms and mycology for a while, but have been to nervous to try.  After all, an untrained eye could easily mistake a poisonous mushroom for edible.  This weekend, I had the opportunity to try wild mushroom hunting, with the help of a mycology expert thankfully.

                My program puts on three cultural excursions a year, the first one was mushroom hunting.  We met up in the south of the city and joined a bus full of other mushroom enthusiasts, all Spanish people.  We each paid €20 for the trip, we also had to bring a container to put our mushrooms in. 

                After about an hour drive, we were in the mountains near the small town of Cabreros.  The fog, the fresh air, and the rain reminded me of being in the mountains in Washington.  At the start of the trail, we were given an explanation in Spanish about which kinds of mushrooms to look for.  Some of the smallest details were significant, for example there were two mushrooms that looked exactly the same but one was toxic and the other was fine to eat.  The difference was if you cut it; if it is white inside it is toxic, orange was edible.

                We then set off on the trail to hunt.  We were allowed to venture from the main group, but had to stay by the trail to avoid getting lost on the mountain.  At first, all we could find were smaller mushrooms.  They were cute but would not make much of a meal.  After some trial and error, we discovered that the biggest mushrooms were buried under layers of pine needles.  It was a bit gross to dig them out, especially since they were slimy, but it wasn’t a problem since we were going to wash them anyway.

                After hunting for a while, we returned to the bus and headed to a hotel in Cabreros.  There, they had a table laid out with multiple kinds of mushrooms.  In Spanish, they explained the differences between them, including smell, flavor, and texture.  They passed around each mushroom, so we had the opportunity to see them up close.  Afterwards, they examined our mushrooms.  We ended up with quite a few good ones!

                Since setas don’t stay fresh for long, we decided to cook them that night.  After cleaning them for about an hour, we chose to fry them up in garlic and oil.  There were several stew recipes online, but we didn’t think we had enough so we choose to keep it simple: fried mushrooms with mashed potatoes.  Delicious!