MOUTH OF THE COLUMBIA: Peninsula’s Mushroom Festival celebrates wild fungi

Published 5:00 pm Wednesday, October 13, 2004

SEAVIEW, Wash. – Like many other local chefs, Michael Lalewicz considers cooking with mushrooms a labor of love, even an obsession. Although he grew up in Detroit, hardly a wild mushroom hot spot, Lalewicz showcases the Long Beach (Wash.) Peninsula’s wild fungi in everything from a spinach salad tossed with morels to delicate salmon mousse stuffed inside an oversized porcini.

“My mom Helen used dried porcinis in her pirogues,” says Lalewicz, who owns and operates Seaview’s Depot Restaurant with his wife, Nancy Gorshe. “I got to know wild mushrooms when I started traveling in Europe in the late 1980s. Around that same time, I first visited the Peninsula.”

Epicenter for wild fungi

Fortunately, Lalewicz now lives and works in one of nature’s mushroom strongholds – the Long Beach Peninsula is an expanse of easily accessible and well-watered coastal forest stretching from Cape Disappointment 28 miles north to Leadbetter Point. In addition to well-known chanterelles and porcinis (also called cepes or Boletes), lobster mushrooms, chicken-of-the-woods, Deliciosus, man-on-horseback mushrooms and more than 50 other varieties grow wild here.

Even if you don’t care to harvest your own, the Peninsula’s Wild Mushroom Festival, scheduled for now through November, affords ample opportunities to sample savory wild mushrooms in sundry ways. In its fourth year, the festival showcases numerous Peninsula restaurants and lodgings that feature wild mushrooms on their menus.

“Peninsula chefs and B&B owners have been using indigenous wild mushrooms in their meals for years,” says Laurie Anderson, co-owner (with her husband David Campiche, an avid mushroom forager) of China Beach Retreat in Ilwaco and Seaview’s Shelburne Inn. “Our goal with the festival is to let visitors know they can come here to enjoy these same mushrooms.”

So far this fall, a mix of damp and sunny days have afforded ideal conditions for wild mushrooms, so there should be plenty of fungi for chefs to incorporate into their menus. And Peninsula food meisters like to get creative. Think chanterelle soup or a triple-mushroom consomme, wild mushroom stroganoff, portobella-chicken liver pate, wild mushroom risotto and a host of other enticing offerings. Blaine Walker, co-owner of Seaview’s 42nd Street Cafe with his wife Cheri, who’s the chef, claims the cafe even will use wild mushrooms in its burgers.

Multi opportunities to taste mushrooms

The Wild Mushroom Festival kicks off tomorrow night (Oct. 15) at The Depot Restaurant (1208 38th Place, Seaview, Wash., (360) 642-7880) with dinner and a sampling of pinot noir wines from English Estate Winery in Vancouver, Wash. Lalewicz’s menu selections will include wild mushroom and sherry bruschetta, caramelized mushroom and miso soup, wild mushroom strudel and a black and chocolate truffle-hazelnut tart.

The Walkers’ 42nd Street Cafe (4201 Pacific Highway, Seaview, Wash., (360)-642-2323) will host a Wild Mushroom and Wine Weekend Oct. 22 and 23 featuring five courses and 10 Yakima Valley (Wash.) wines.

Also on Oct. 24, the Canoe Room Cafe (161 Howerton Ave., Ilwaco, Wash., (360) 642-4899) at the Port of Ilwaco will offer a wild mushroom brunch, plus a Nov. 4 Wild Mushroom Fashion Show with lunch and an evening repast on Nov. 11.

On Oct. 27, China Beach Retreat (800-INN-1896), a cozy yet luxurious lodging situated on the Baker Bay shoreline in view of Cape Disappointment and the ocean, will welcome Italian-born chef Maurizio Paparo, who will prepare Mediterranean-inspired small plates (paired with wines) using local fresh-picked and dried fungi. Paparo is the owner of Eugene’s Excelsior Cafe.

Then diners can feast on six courses and sip five wines Oct. 29 at a gala dinner at the Shoalwater Restaurant (4415 Pacific Highway, Seaview, Wash., (360) 642-4142). Numerous other Peninsula restaurants and lodgings are participating in the festival, although not all menus have been finalized.

Fungi novices hoping to gain a feel for foraging can accompany Veronica Williams during a couple of hikes (Oct. 16 and Nov. 6) through some of the Peninsula’s wild mushroom habitat. A professional forager who learned to harvest fungi in the Carpathian Mountains of her native Hungary, Williams will help participants identify wild mushrooms and perhaps reveal a few foraging secrets.

Cooking enthusiasts can learn how to prepare wild mushrooms during classes Oct. 30 and Nov. 16 led by Jeff McMahon, the head culinary honcho at Moby Dick Hotel and Oyster Farm (25814 Sandridge Road, Nahcotta, Wash., (360) 665-4543).

For more info about the Wild Mushroom Festival, phone (800) 451-2542 or visit www.funbeach.com/mushroom.

Contact the Mouth at The Daily Astorian, P.O. Box 210, Astoria, OR 97103, phone (503) 325-3211 or e-mail mouth@dailyastorian.com

‘Shroom quiz

Mushrooms come in thousands of varieties and almost as many sizes and color combinations. Nobody knows them all. Test your mushroom knowledge by taking this ‘shroom-lore quiz.

1. Who were the first cultivators of mushrooms?

a) Egyptians

b) Mesopotamians

c) Greeks

2. Scientists estimate how many species of mushrooms grow in North America?

a) 1,000

b) 10,000

c) 100,000

3. Most mushrooms grow in the dark. Which variety requires direct sunlight?

a) shiitake

b) matsutake

c) morel

4. Folks who study fungi are called?

a) mycologists

b) proctologists

c) fungi philosophers

5. Mushrooms belong to what botanical class?

a) Cephalopods

b) Basidiomycetes

c) Aristophanes

6. Match the country below with the common name it accords Boletus edulis, one of the most prized wild mushrooms:

U.S.porciniEnglandking boleteGermanypenny bunItalysteinpilz

Answers: 1. c; 2. b; 3. c; 4. a; 5. b; 6. U.S. – king Bolete, England – penny bun, Germany – steinpilz, Italy – porcini