FABULOUS FUNGI

Sunnybrae Country Restaurant and Cooking School is located near thetown of Birregurra in SW Victoria - it is also my home with my partnerDiane Garrett. My culinary introduction to wild fungi began with thetasting and cooking of wild mushrooms while I was working in Londonwhere it was not unusual to have access to fresh morels, chanterelles aswell as many other exotic, wild fungi. It was also where I first tastedtruffles.Diane and I have been living at Sunnybrae since 1981. Walks in the bush,local pine forests and old gardens very quickly reveal wonderful displaysof strange and beautiful fungi. I began to use wild mushrooms firstly forour own table and then slowly as I started to understand the varieties, webegan to use them in the restaurant. I cannot caution too strongly as tothe dangers of indiscriminate tastings. It took about six years before wewere confident of our understanding of them to start putting them on ourmenus, and even now, there are only about three varieties that weuse...but the hunt is on. The research for this class has been a wonderful, enlightening experience- full of discovering new flavours, intrigue, secrecy, stories of struggle,success and failure and unfortunately, death. I would like to thank themany people who are pioneering work to develop these exotic, flavourfulfoods and for the time they have given me. I hope this short session canexcite you to follow in my footsteps and get to know and enjoy thesemarvels of nature - but please tread very carefully! The interest in the botanical collateral of Australia began as early as thefirst fleet. We know of the work of Banks and his collection of plantmaterial and the interest in fungi has also been here since the beginning.Some early volumes on fungi have been by Kalchbrenner in “Grevillea”with contributions by Bailley, Dr Berggren, Mrs Flora Martin, Baron VonMueller and many others. Their early studies were brought together in avolume called the “Handbook of Australian Fungi” by M C Cooke, 1892.Cooke was a leading 19th century Mycologist working at Kew Gardens inEngland. The volume is extraordinarily comprehensive in the scale anddepth of its research, but unfortunately, as Cooke himself mentions in theintroduction, the reliability of some of the specimens was very variable. This is because they had to be sent to Kew - a long and difficult journey,and preservation techniques at the time were not very advanced. Itsscale exemplifies the dedication of the early botanists. There is very little known about the qualities of indigenous species of fungi, but much work is being done to understand their culture, thecompounds they contain, their relationship with the environment and of course their culinary contribution. The search for flavourful Australianfungi is slowly beginning. The difficulty of the task is that there are somany species, and forms within each species. Aboriginal culture has used

fungi in their diet and we have a lot to learn from them as well as fromthe botanists. ______________________________________

Morels

One of the varieties that excite the imagination and palates of cooks everywhere is morels. There are Australian indigenous varieties insimilar forms as those found in Europe and Nth America, butunfortunately my experience has been that they are not quite asflavoursome as European varieties (but I haven’t eaten that many). Theexact locations are closely guarded by those lucky enough to have foundthem. Their preferred habitats are eucalypt forests to which they do nothave a strict symbiotic relationship. They regularly come up in the samespots in springtime. One feature that accelerates their arrival is fires.After a bushfire there are usually many more morels. Please rememberpicking any plant material from National Parks is prohibited. The culture and cultivation of morels has been a quest for botanists andmicrobiologists since the 18th century. In the modern era, abreakthrough was made by Ronald Ower of San Francisco ‘82. Hesucceeded in regularly cultivating morels and published his results in thatyear. He had difficulty in convincing commercial cultivating companiesthat he had a process that worked but Neogen of Michigan becameinterested. This company was affiliated with the Michigan StateUniversity. Neogen convinced Ower to come to East Lansing to developthe process. In 1986 US patent No 4,594,809 was submitted. Sadly,Ower did not see the patent granted as he was murdered during aburglary at his home a few weeks before it was granted. The process wasdeveloped by Neogen who embraced the financial backing of Domini’sPizza. They formed a partnership called “Company M” which includedNeogen, Dominis, Skandigen Inc, (Sweden) Kuhn Champignons(Switzerland) and the Salk Institute of Bio-Technology (La Jolla, CA).(Starts getting scary). They built a pilot plant in Mason, Michigan. Thiswhole enterprise was sold to Terry Farms, Minnesotta. The company andtechnology have since been sold again to Morel Mountain Incorporated,who as far as I can tell own all the rights to the commercial cultivation of morels under this process in the US.In Australia, current research is being undertaken by Helen Faris and NGNair, with Professor Andrew Broderick who is the Director of theAustralian Wild Fungi Collection at the University of Western Sydney. Fariswrites that “...despite the substantial interest in morels, comparativelylittle is known about the biology of this fungus.” Her research is seekingto address this problem, and to investigate the environmental andnutritional conditions that lead to fruiting bodies of these Australianisolates, eg the role of bush fires. In the laboratory, she has succeeded inproducing fruiting examples and we eagerly await results of her furtherresearch.

Also, at the University of Western Sydney School of Horticulture, KarenStott is working with Wood Blewitts (Lepista nuda), a variety thatregularly grows in one of the vegetable beds at Sunnybrae. AndrewBroderick is heading both projects and is also collecting and studyingmany other Australian and cosmopolitan species. The world market for exotic fungi runs into billons of dollars, eg Boletusedulis, a relatively inexpensive mushroom, is said to have a world marketof over $1 billon with some exotic oriental species being even higher, egmatsutake - more about that later - and then there are truffles... ______________________________________

Truffles

- No other fungus creates more mystery and intrigue than this.In our “neck of the woods” there is a lot of research and development inthe cultivation of truffles, particularly in New Zealand and Tasmania. IanHall at ‘Crop and Food’ Research Invermay Agricultural Centre, Mosgiel,New Zealand, has been establishing Truffières since the mid ‘80's. Truffles fall into a category of mushrooms called mychorizzal species, thatis those that form true symbiotic relationships with the roots of certaintrees. In the case of truffles it is usually oaks. Ian Hall’s research is alsotaking in the Boletus edulis (cep porcini) and matsutake. This mushroomseems to be the ‘Holy Grail’ of current research as this delicatelyflavoured Japanese fungus that commands such high prices, is slowlylosing its natural habitat in Japan due to pollution and development. Ianhas had some success in inoculating Pinus radiata and Pinus densiflora,meanwhile..... over in Perth, Nick Malajczuk working at the CSIRO, is incharge of another exciting project involving mychorrizal (tree-related)species. He and Mark Burchett are establishing broad acre eucalyptplantations in China using Australian mychorrizal fungi. What needs to beunderstood about this relation between fungi and trees is that the treesare just as dependent on the fungi as the fungi are on the trees. Theother branch of this project is research into edible mychorrizal fungi,again ceps and matsutake. Bill Dunstan is the research fellow in thisproject.In Victoria, Slippery Jacks (Suillus luteus) are a member of the samefamily as porcini, cep etc. Although not as flavourful, there have beenmany stories of true Ceps being found in Australia (anecdotal evidencegoes back to 1892) but a positive sighting has yet to be confirmed. Sothe hunt is on. We should have fresh porcini from New Zealand forMasterclass, if Australian Quarantine is co-operative.At present there are many interesting mushrooms cultivated for thecommercial market. The pioneers in this area have been amongst manyMichael Brown of Huon Valley Mushrooms, Tasmania, Noel Arrold, BowralNSW and Jeff Lee, Wandin North Victoria. Their work concentrates onshiitake, enoki, oyster, swiss brown (also called portabello and honeybrown), shimengi, chestnut and black and white fungus.