Blushers, deceivers and a death cap
13 Jun
Some of my fondest childhood memories relate to foraging for girolles with my parents at our summerhouse in Finland. Finns are spoiled when it comes to mushrooms – from May to the first frosts in November there is always something exciting in the forest. In fact Finnish forests are so bountiful with porcini that Italians fly in to pick them.
Mushroom identification at Tokai forest
When I discovered that slowfood organizes an annual mushroom foraging event in Cape Town, I got hugely excited about learning about local varieties. It was a tough winter’s day of about 25 C when we met our fellow basket-bearing foragers at the picturesque Tokai forest. We set off in small groups to pick whatever we could find for a little identification session an hour later with a mushroom expert. Being in South Africa, our foraging activities were overseen by a troop of baboons keen to share our loot.
Lots of pretty mushrooms
I was surprised to see 20ish different types of mushrooms appear from the baskets. To Cam’s delight one of the mushrooms was peppery- a bit like chilli. Most of the mushrooms have exciting names like blusher and deceiver and you can think of great fairy tales to go with them. There is also the death cap, which apparently lives up to its name. Based on a quick google search it is the world’s most dangerous mushroom- glad our team didn’t pick any. These mushrooms were brought to South Africa by settlers who transported whole trees (roots intact) from Europe. The mushrooms came along as they live in symbiosis with the trees. I was slightly disappointed that we weren’t picking native varieties. Apparently there are some edible ones but they taste like soap. So maybe not such a loss. We took home a basket of pine rings which we sauteed in butter and garlic.
Pine rings
This event was organized by Slowfood which is an international organization that promotes biodiversity, taste education and artisan producers. Slowfood organizes all sorts of fun foraging events and outings to different producers. Last week we went to a charcuterie making class. Click here to find out more about Slowfood.
Laying out our finds
Cam and the chili mushroom
Baboon friend keeping an eye on our foraging
Tags: cape town, mushroom foraging, slowfood mothercity, south africa, tokai forest
Oh that’s fascinating! Did not know that there was any foraging going on in Cape Town, and how interesting that the species were brought along with the trees by European settlers.
Wow, this is so nice! Will be watching to see what other events will be arranged! (I love your background!)
Thanks!! It was really good fun. Definitely recommend joining slowfood.