I have just finished a three-day fungi course taught by Patrick Harding, the fungi veteran who wrote the Collins guide to edible fungi and, of course, the excellent Collins Gem. The course was based at a B&B in Crieff (Galvelmore House no connection) and used the local woodlands as foraging locations.
I had done a day or so on fungi before, on the Woodsmoke Autumn Harvester course, so was not a complete beginner, although I still felt pretty nervous about eating fungi I had found.
The course began on Friday evening with an introductory slide show, then proceeded through Saturday, Sunday and Monday morning with a foraging expedition, a back-at-base sorting exercise, a mushroom-orientated dinner cooked by our hosts (excellent), and then an evening slide-show and talk from Patrick.
Patrick's approach works really well compared to what I had done before. Rather than just teaching a few edibles and nasties, he goes back to first principles and, using a simple classification he has devised based on spore colour and gill shape, enables you to slot almost any fungus you find into one of about 20 families. You therefore come away with an ability to identify almost anything, rather than just recognising a few edibles and then saying "I don't know what that is" to 90% of what you see. It's a bit more academic in style, but pays dividends over the three days as you start to say - Bolete, wax-cap, brittle-gill, funnel-cap, Cortinarius, fibre-cap etc with increasing confidence. In total we identified 126 different species, all on or near popular local strolls, where I would have said beforehand that there were no fungi!
The first day was devoted to classifying all fungi and the second to rock-solid identification of about 20 edibles. The third day was a consolidation exercise. By the time we left we all felt very significantly more confident, so much so that I cooked up my gathered Chanterelles the next evening for a bunch of French visitors! Unfortunately they arrived fashionably late and my magnificent Chanterelle risotto was rather dried up by the time they ate it. However it was redeemed with a sprinkle of powered cep, surely the best condiment in the world and so easy to make (another of Patrick's tips).
The course is designed for people staying at the excellent Galvelmore House B&B, http://www.galvelmore.co.uk/event3.htm but I attended as a "day and dinner" delegate only, being reasonably local, for which I paid a lower rate. I am not sure if this is a generally available option, but if it is, then Comrie Croft is only 4 miles up the road for those wishing to camp or stay in one of CC's stove-heated katas to round out the experience.
Some pictures of the action:
I had done a day or so on fungi before, on the Woodsmoke Autumn Harvester course, so was not a complete beginner, although I still felt pretty nervous about eating fungi I had found.
The course began on Friday evening with an introductory slide show, then proceeded through Saturday, Sunday and Monday morning with a foraging expedition, a back-at-base sorting exercise, a mushroom-orientated dinner cooked by our hosts (excellent), and then an evening slide-show and talk from Patrick.
Patrick's approach works really well compared to what I had done before. Rather than just teaching a few edibles and nasties, he goes back to first principles and, using a simple classification he has devised based on spore colour and gill shape, enables you to slot almost any fungus you find into one of about 20 families. You therefore come away with an ability to identify almost anything, rather than just recognising a few edibles and then saying "I don't know what that is" to 90% of what you see. It's a bit more academic in style, but pays dividends over the three days as you start to say - Bolete, wax-cap, brittle-gill, funnel-cap, Cortinarius, fibre-cap etc with increasing confidence. In total we identified 126 different species, all on or near popular local strolls, where I would have said beforehand that there were no fungi!
The first day was devoted to classifying all fungi and the second to rock-solid identification of about 20 edibles. The third day was a consolidation exercise. By the time we left we all felt very significantly more confident, so much so that I cooked up my gathered Chanterelles the next evening for a bunch of French visitors! Unfortunately they arrived fashionably late and my magnificent Chanterelle risotto was rather dried up by the time they ate it. However it was redeemed with a sprinkle of powered cep, surely the best condiment in the world and so easy to make (another of Patrick's tips).
The course is designed for people staying at the excellent Galvelmore House B&B, http://www.galvelmore.co.uk/event3.htm but I attended as a "day and dinner" delegate only, being reasonably local, for which I paid a lower rate. I am not sure if this is a generally available option, but if it is, then Comrie Croft is only 4 miles up the road for those wishing to camp or stay in one of CC's stove-heated katas to round out the experience.
Some pictures of the action:
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