The University of Chicago’s Independent Student Newspaper since 1892

Chicago Maroon

The University of Chicago’s Independent Student Newspaper since 1892

Chicago Maroon

The University of Chicago’s Independent Student Newspaper since 1892

Chicago Maroon

Letter from Toledo: A shortcut to mushrooms

Sampling local fare while abroad in Spain.
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Lily Gordon

As a lifelong pescatarian who eats limited amounts of seafood and dairy, I braced myself for a diet change before beginning my quarter-long homestay in Toledo, Spain. My plan was to embrace as many traditional foods as possible while still avoiding meat and poultry (yes, that includes jamón ibérico). I expected cod, sardines, and wheels of Manchego, and my host mother does regularly prepare seafood paella, sardines in vinegar sauce, and grilled goat cheese with honey. What I didn’t expect, though, was the abundance of wild mushrooms, or setas, that awaited.

Autumn and spring are the mushroom seasons in Spain—I had arrived just in time. Back at home, I would always jump at the opportunity to order dishes with shiitakes, chanterelles, enokitakes, or king trumpet mushrooms, most of which are cultivated or imported. But I’d never tried a succulent saffron milk cap (Lactarius deliciosus), a vibrant yellow and orange Caesar’s mushroom (Amanita caesarea), or giant knight mushroom (Tricholoma colossus), and I’d never seen a selection of over 20 recently harvested mushrooms like that boasted by one vendor at La Boqueria, a bustling market in Barcelona.

My host mom introduced me to the mushrooms of Spain in October after her 30-something-year-old son had hauled home a crateful. He had foraged them, along with some chestnuts, in the mountains of El Real de San Vicente, the nearby pueblo of more than a thousand inhabitants where both he and his mother had grown up. He spent many a day from the time he was a child hiking in La Sierra de San Vicente, making a hobby of hunting for setas.

When I expressed interest in learning more about Spain’s mushrooms, my host mother appeared at my bedroom door with a stack of mushroom-identifying guidebooks with Post-it notes marking the species native to her pueblo. She explained that the region attracts mycologists and aficionados and that she has recently observed a renewed interest in mushroom foraging there.

Since then, I have tapear-ed (“tapa”-ed) in Madrid on croquetas de boletus, croquettes filled with a silky porcini purée; I have eaten black rice with setas in a macrobiotic restaurant in Barcelona; I have tried setas a la plancha grilled with olive oil, garlic, onion, and parsley, the most common way to prepare them in Spain; and I have indulged in my host brother’s foraged raw Caesar’s mushrooms (€19 for 400 grams) drizzled in olive oil and sprinkled with sea salt.

Along with a new Spanish vocabulary in the realm of fungi, I also have the triumph of finding a mushroom in the wild to recall and cherish with my next bite. When I accompanied my host mom and her friends for a day hike on one of the spiky chestnut shell–covered trails of La Sierra de San Vicente on a zero-degree Celsius day, now and then we would pass somebody in the forest with a wicker basket and brush to dust off foraged treasures. And after venturing off the path for a few minutes and scanning the ground covered in crunchy brown leaves for mushrooms, I found my first porcini.

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