Do you love mushrooms as much as I do? I've harvested them a few times. Many varieties are too expensive in the store, so I only get them when I find them in the wild. But how do you know which ones are good to eat? And once you do find them, you need recipes. Can they be grown in your backyard garden? I wondered about all these things. With the books I'll be reviewing now, we can answer all these questions.
Foraging
I've been foraging for mushrooms for years. When I first decided to do this, I was not going to just go out and start picking, I needed to know what was good to eat and what was not. I found two books that have been in my library ever since and I reference every time I go foraging. My favorite field guides to mushrooming are by David Arora: Mushrooms Demystified: A Comprehensive Guide to the Fleshy Fungi and All That the Rain Promises, and More ...: A Hip Pocket Guide to Western Mushrooms. These are two great and very different guides to mushrooms. Mr. Arora is a bit of a hippy who loves to go out after a good rain and find all the best mushrooms he can. He seems to know about every type and his books are a must have for any fungi lover who wants to go hunting.
Mushrooms Demystified is a huge tome of a book. About 2 inches thick and 1000 pages, it has details on over 2000 species along with information about if they can be eaten, if they are hallucinogenics, how they are classified, where they grow and so much more. You will even find information about using some as dyes and medicines. This is NOT a field guide. It does not fit in your back pocket and would weigh you down too much if you tried to take it with you. Keep this book at home, then when you are out, with our next guide, if you find a specimen you don't know, you can bring home the specimen and it will have all the details you need.
All That the Rain Promises, and More ... is your pocket guide. It is made to fit into your back pocket and is used by people all over the world to find mushrooms. It has a key in the front and back that will guide you to the right place in the book to locate details about the mushroom you have found. It has the most popular mushrooms, with nice full color pictures and some information about them. In the notes, it tells on what page in Mushrooms Demystified you can find more information about it.
If you are only going to get one mushroom guide, I recommend All That the Rain Promises, and More ... as you are likely to carry it with you when you go foraging, and what is the good of having a guide and not using it? If you can get both, Mushrooms Demystified has more information, more species, and makes a great addition to have at home. For instance, if you run across a Fat Jack in the woods, you look it up in All That the Rain Promises, and More .... There you find out the important piece: "Edibility: Edible". You then take it home and look it up in Mushrooms Demystified. There you find much more: "Edibility: Edible. It is generally listed as mediocre, but one collection I sampled had a rather pleasing lemony flavor."
Use MD to get some details about a mushroom before hand, such as where to find Oregon White Truffles (MD p.858-9). "Habitat: Solitary, scattered, or gregarious in woods and at their edges, associated mainly if not exclusively with Douglas-fir (Usually trees between the ages of 8 and 65 years); found from California to British Columbia, but especially common in Oregon. Although it normally grows underground, I have found specimens on the surface." You can then head out to your nearest Doug-fir patch, with a shovel, and go digging for them. If you are lucky you will find some. Be careful though "widespread collecting can be destructive."
Cooking
You collected your Black Morel (Rain p.230, MD pp.790-1 & plates 199, 202) and your Lion's Mane (Rain p.200, MD pp.615-616) and now you need to know what to do with them. I headed to the library website and put a couple of books on hold. These two will provide you with a good collection of recipes to keep you busy for a while.
Mushroom Feast: A Celebration of all Edible Fungi, Cultivated, Wild and Dried, with Recipes by Jane Grigson was the first I looked at. It first tells you which are the "best" edible mushrooms and then has several sections on different types of foods. The book includes information on mushrooms in history, legends, and some recipes from the far past. Very nicely written book and a fun read, even if you don't try the recipes.
The Complete Mushroom Book: Savory Recipes for Wild and Cultivated Varieties by Antonio Carluccio is a combination of a field guide and a cookbook, or so it claims. It is beautifully illustrated and well laid out. In the field guide arena, I would not count it as very good since you can't easily find the mushroom you are looking for as there is no key. Besides, it is far too heavy a book to bring into the field, even if you cut out the recipe book and just took the field guide. As far as a recipe book goes, it is your standard fare. A little information about where the author got the recipe, the recipe, and a great picture of it. Nicely done, but I like the history and whatnot of Mushroom Feast even if it does not have all the great illustrations.
If you want one mushroom recipe book, get Mushroom Feast if you like history and reading. If you prefer to have pretty pictures to go with the recipes and a nice pretty layout on the recipe, take The Complete Mushroom Book. If you want a third choice, I found a copy of Wild Mushroom Recipes by the Puget Sound Mycological Society, but it is hard to find. It is just a simple listing of recipes, no pictures or anything. What I liked about it is that the recipes are grouped by genus of mushroom. This makes it really nice for finding a recipe specific to a certain mushroom you found.
Growing
Hooked yet? How about growing your favorites? Check out these two books on cultivating our fungal friends in your back yard. They want you to grow them! You know they do! And you want to grow them too! Pick up these books, they don't go boo!
I've wanted to grow mushrooms for a long time, but never have. I've never really had a place to do it. Still, I want to learn how. I checked a couple of books that are recommended in Mushrooms Demystified and read them. Like David's books, one is a tome, the other much smaller.
The tome is called Mushroom Cultivator: A Practical Guide to Growing Mushrooms at Home and is by Paul Stamets and J.S. Chilton. It has all the information you need to grow mushrooms on any scale. It has great detail on every aspect it speaks of. I found it to be a little overwhelming, but if I was going to take growing mushrooms very seriously, I'm sure I'd want this book in my collection.
and 
. These are two great and very different guides to mushrooms. Mr. Arora is a bit of a hippy who loves to go out after a good rain and find all the best mushrooms he can. He seems to know about every type and his books are a must have for any fungi lover who wants to go hunting.
by Jane Grigson was the first I looked at. It first tells you which are the "best" edible mushrooms and then has several sections on different types of foods. The book includes information on mushrooms in history, legends, and some recipes from the far past. Very nicely written book and a fun read, even if you don't try the recipes.
by Antonio Carluccio is a combination of a field guide and a cookbook, or so it claims. It is beautifully illustrated and well laid out. In the field guide arena, I would not count it as very good since you can't easily find the mushroom you are looking for as there is no key. Besides, it is far too heavy a book to bring into the field, even if you cut out the recipe book and just took the field guide. As far as a recipe book goes, it is your standard fare. A little information about where the author got the recipe, the recipe, and a great picture of it. Nicely done, but I like the history and whatnot of 
by the Puget Sound Mycological Society, but it is hard to find. It is just a simple listing of recipes, no pictures or anything. What I liked about it is that the recipes are grouped by genus of mushroom. This makes it really nice for finding a recipe specific to a certain mushroom you found.
and is by Paul Stamets and J.S. Chilton. It has all the information you need to grow mushrooms on any scale. It has great detail on every aspect it speaks of. I found it to be a little overwhelming, but if I was going to take growing mushrooms very seriously, I'm sure I'd want this book in my collection.
by Bob Harris is a much simpler guide. It is a good beginners guide and once you get more advanced, 
