Fall is here so it begins the foraging season. I already told you about the mushrooms I love to forage and on my blog you can find recipes with these mushrooms. Today, I am gone add one more mushroom I like to forage and I didn’t find it for a few years.
Because of all the rain these mushroom it grew a lot so we could forage and use it. In the next few days I am gone write you a recipe in which I used Sparassis crispa or “Creasta Cocosului” the Romanian local term which is translated “rooster’s comb”.
You know it as “coral mushroom” and is an edible mushroom. It’s generally shaped like an irregular sphere on a short stem. The color of its spores ranges variously from white to pale yellow.
This mushroom is very tasty. You need to clean it very well before using it. It should be picked when is creamy white because after that is too indigestible to eat.
You can dry it to preserve it and use it in soups or stews.
Experiments suggest that the mushroom contains chemicals which may stimulate the immune system and have anti-tumor properties.
Cooking Without Limits 
Miss Gabi, I don’t think there are one in 1,000 living Americans who would feel safe harvesting mushrooms. The only fungi I’ve eaten from the wild are puff balls, which are hard to confuse with anything else, and a basket of colorful finds collected on a hike with a forester who literally wrote a book on the subject. 🙂 Are you unusual in Romania, or have more people there kept this foraging knowledge?
In Romania are a few people foraging. Is not a secret. People lost interest in learning. Because takes years to learn to forage wild mushrooms. My father taught me when I was 5-6 years old like my son is now. I am teaching him just a few types of mushrooms. There are so many but if you know the important ones and you follow the foraging rules I think it is enough. Your life is richer.
I agree! Good for you, keeping the tradition alive. I can ID some wild herb types of things. Our daughters can, too. It’s a start — or a return. 🙂
Good for you – knowing your mushrooms! That is something I have not got into. Never seen a cauliflower mushroom before. If it is not white and not easily digested, what color is it?
Goes from yellow to brown
Wow looks so cool! Never seen that kind before, this makes me want to go mushroom hunting too!
Thank you
I am not a fan of mushrooms but Learned a new thing.👌
Thank you
I’d love to learn to forage mushroom but you really do need a good teacher.
True.
Thank you for sharing. I love hearing about the foods in your country!
You are welcome
A very interesting post, well done!
Thank you
I’ve never heard of this ‘mushroom’ and look forward to the promised recipe, though it’s unlikely I’ll ever be able to make it.
I’ve still to use some of the chanterelle I brought back from close to you (Vama) – dried as you instructed. It’s surprising what a small jar 2kg of them, clean and dried, will go into. Now I wish I had brought more.
Maybe next year I’ll have the opportunity to forage for them, easy to identify unless you also have the ‘false chanerelle’, which I understand is poisonous, in the area.
I discover that chanterelle are easy to identify. The false chanterelle are a bit different. I am talking from my point of view.
I’ve never heard of this mushroom until now. Sounds interesting. 🙂
Wow you are brave
Thank you
Never heard of this ones! Wish I could try it!
uh, you may want to check this mushroom. This is what we call one of the coral mushrooms, and NOT a cauliflower mushroom. Cauliflower look like wide pasta flat noodles all folded up in a pile, and grow right at the base, within inches, of a host tree, (and are YUMMY). this picture is of a Romaria family type Coral mushroom, with it’s little pointed tips and coloring and separation from its host tree. don’t want to be “that guy” who is the “know it all”, but because I appreciate your spirit and energy to also be out in the woods, I would double check this one out. Coral’s are a bit rough to eat, cauliflowers have a wonderful scent that also distinguish them from the Coral mushrooms. anyway, enjoy the woods, be careful, great photos of the morels. thanks for letting me add my two cents my friend, just don’t want to see you get sick, that’s all! keep enjoying those beautiful woods and the Earth. be well, Momentummikey 🙂
I appreciate this. It is coral mushroom. I will change it.
Dear Gabi:
Congrats on becoming a new mom.
I know nothing about foraging mushrooms, so I would be afraid to get a poisonous one. I do have a local mushroom grower, who grows so many types of mushrooms. I will be doing a project with them to do a series of mushrooms recipes with mushrooms they have grown. At least I am lucky enough to have a local mushroom grower. I have some mushroom recipes of my own, but I will look out for your recipes for some inspiration.
Sounds great!
I love mushrooms, I have yet to try this type. I want to learn harvesting mushrooms out the woods.
My parents are from the old Czechoslovakia and my Mum always told us about picking mushrooms in the forest when she was a child. Her brothers used to post dried foraged mushrooms to us in the UK and my cousin in Prague, whom I see every year, still picks them with her husband. You cannot beat the taste of wild mushrooms but have to know what you are doing. Sadly I have never been taught – it is not very common over here and I was not brought up in an area with wild mushrooms.
Regional food of India. Only few see areas lucky to have the taste regularly!
But it is different! It is not the same what we eat here! Seems to be new addition to me!