The Mushroom Hunters

May 27, 2013
Intrepid and inspired, Seattle-based author Cook (Fat of the Land) follows his passion for porcini, chanterelles, and black trumpets into remote forests, from the Pacific Northwest to Colorado, where mild fungi fruit in abundance and are hunted in secret and traded like contraband. The mushroom hunters he joins are like the gold prospectors of the Wild West: secretive men with sharp survival skills, who intimately know the terrain and can endure brutal days bushwhacking for an itinerant hand-to-mouth existence. The hunters pick different species, depending on the season—from hedgehogs (which might go for $7 per pound) to king bolete and matsutake—amassing pounds of mushrooms to sell. The author trails veteran harvester Doug Glen Carnell through the coastal Olympic Peninsula. A favorite buyer is Jeremy Faber, owner of Foraged and Found Edibles, who has connections with the fancy restaurants in Seattle and New York; he inspects the day’s hauls and tallies the prices. The hunters venture into coastal California in winter, picking yellow feet, among others; they even come upon a cornucopia of “burn morels,” which emerge after forest fires. Cook amply, knowledgeably incorporates debates about sustainability and legality, and offers recipes. Agent: Lisa Grubka, Fletcher & Co.

July 15, 2013
The author of Fat of the Land: Adventures of a 21st Century Forager (2009) finds a rich subculture in mushroom hunters. Mushrooms: one of those love-it-or-hate-it foods, up there with beets and anchovies. For Cook, mushrooms fall firmly in his love-it category. He opens with a declaration: "My obsession with fungi arrived like a sickness," he writes. "It consumed me." With that obsession driving, the author went out to find not just wild mushrooms, but the people who venture into forests and other secluded areas to find them. He met up with Doug, a hunter and self-proclaimed redneck with bad teeth, who acted as Cook's guide to the mushroom-hunters subculture. With guidance from Doug, Cook rambled on from one hunting excursion to the next, all around the mountains of the Pacific Northwest. Along the way, he met a full array of quirky, colorful characters--bearded mountain men, Laotian immigrants, and Jeremy Faber, whose company supplies foraged foods to high-end restaurateurs--but none of them are as well fleshed out as Doug. Overall, there's not much narrative pull behind the book; Cook mostly seems to drift from one hunt to the next with little focus, and closing the story with the unexpected death of Faber's former girlfriend feels tacked-on. Further, the author whipsaws between language so terse it reads like bad Hemingway ("The temperature was dropping. Soon it would snow in the high country. Som had a lot to think about") and cringe-worthy purple prose--e.g., "Enveloping you like a cloud is the aroma and taste of a night of lovemaking -- an earthy musk, a taste of sweetness and of sweat, a complexity that would make a wine snob blush." An unfocused backwoods ramble among people who forage for a living.

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September 1, 2013

Cook (columnist, Seattle magazine; Fat of the Land: Adventures of a 21st Century Forager) takes readers into a world of fascinating contrasts and characters as he reveals how commercially prized wild mushrooms, e.g., morels, chanterelles, trumpets, and matsutake, are hunted, bought, sold, and prepared. Immersing himself in the wild mushroom subculture of the Pacific Northwest and Rocky Mountain states, Cook tells the story of an underground economy supported by pickers (both marginalized, often itinerant pickers and local, recreational pickers), best-selling cookbook writers, society chefs (some names are fictionalized), and the urban restaurant scene, from Seattle to New York. Along the way, readers learn about mushroom taxonomy, discover delicious recipes, come to understand the living conditions of immigrant pickers, and stand in line in a Montana airport with buyers shipping hundreds of pounds of wild mushrooms to markets and restaurants in New York. VERDICT Not simply about mushrooms, this book examines human behavior, economics, food, society, and nature. In the end, readers will have learned a great deal about U.S. economic and social structures--all while being entertained and enlightened by stories of gastronomy and mushrooms. Highly recommended.--Linda Loos Scarth, Cedar Rapids, IA

Copyright 2013 Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.

August 1, 2013
With the arrival of spring, North America's woodlands begin to echo with the footfalls of stealthy and secretive hunters who aren't after any animal. They are on the prowl for fungi springing from the awakening forest floor. Morel hunters eventually give way to other adepts foraging for later-arriving porcini and chanterelles. These hardy souls then meet up with even more shadowy types, dealers and middlemen, furtive guardians of mushroom supply and demand, who resell their booty to restaurants, greenmarkets, and the export trade. This gray market runs on cash only, and serious players in this secretive society are frequently armed. All this is in service of the fifth taste, umami, a prime flavor that mushrooms supply in such abundance that chefs willingly pay astronomical prices to please themselves and well-heeled guests. Cook's sketches of these unique and idiosyncratic characters aren't always wholly sympathetic, but he makes every one of them real.(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2013, American Library Association.)