Adrienne Su
The Truffled Huts of Spring
On mild, overcast, muddy days in April, as I drag myself out to the backyard to weed and mulch, I encounter the odd mushroom—not the kind one might cultivate for the kitchen but the ephemeral unexpected guest that appears in isolation, often below emerging greenery, sometimes out in the open, especially after heavy rain.
While I’m a decent cook and adventurous food shopper, I’m no wild-mushroom expert, so I don’t think of these specimens as food or even distant relatives of food. They strike me as forbidden, potentially deadly, perhaps the co-conspirators of invasive plants. They often crop up among returning perennials—the wild ginger that took months of effort to establish or the Joe Pye Weed I bought at a native-plant sale—and initially, I feel almost as hostile toward the mushrooms as I do toward the plantains, crabgrass, dandelions, and goutweed that bring me outside to do battle in the first place.
Yet one poem by Emily Dickinson reminds me to think of uninvited fungi as semi-ghostly, benevolent travelers:
The Mushroom is the Elf of Plants -
At Evening, it is not
At Morning, in a Truffled Hut
It stop opon a Spot
As if it tarried always
And yet it’s whole Career
Is shorter than a Snake’s Delay -
And fleeter than a Tare -
’Tis Vegetation’s Juggler –
The Germ of Alibi -
Doth like a Bubble antedate
And like a Bubble, hie -
I feel as if the Grass was pleased
To have it intermit -
This surreptitious Scion
Of Summer’s circumspect.
Had Nature any supple Face
Or could she one contemn -
Had Nature an Apostate -
That Mushroom - it is Him!
(1350)
The notion that the mushroom is fragile and fleeting (“Doth like a Bubble antedate / And like a Bubble, hie –”) makes it more vulnerable than threatening, the kind of guest who begs for mercy and doesn’t overstay. Its residence is so brief that it can almost claim not to have been there at all (“The Germ of Alibi”), had a crime taken place in the “Spot.” We wouldn’t normally compare its pace of retreat to that of a snake, but by doing so (“And yet it’s whole Career / Is shorter than a Snake’s Delay -”), Dickinson conveys how quickly it is gone—as if the mushroom’s whole lifespan might dwell within the split second in which a snake goes from being at rest to speeding away, perhaps after being surprised by a person. That lifespan inhabits literary time: a hundred pages could be written about what happens in the mind of the mushroom or snake in that moment. Dickinson’s humorous gesture of calling the mushroom “Him” completes the transition from object to character, thing to person.
The mushrooms that unexpectedly arise in my yard may look to me like invaders, but of course, from their perspective, I’m the one who doesn’t belong. They don’t care that I paid another person for this plot of land. And in any case, when it comes to land, they are gentle. Invaders are aggressors, spreading too fast and voluminously, choking other plants; “Tare” may be one such invader. Mushrooms, on the other hand, make cameo appearances, like Super Bowl ads or cartoon characters, comical or hyperbolic, with skinny stems and floppy caps or trunklike stems and tiny caps. Sometimes they stick around for weeks; other times, they vanish so fast that they feel miragelike. But in my experience, they don’t seem to be out to conquer territory. Perhaps this is one reason they might be nature’s “Apostate”: at least in the limited space of my backyard, they don’t so much enter the fray as touch down like tiny UFOs, then take off again while everyone else is asleep.
I’m an accidental, incidental gardener—a person who wound up responsible for a yard and learned from trial and error and the ongoing advice of a neighbor who once worked for the county ag extension. Over the two decades we lived side by side, my neighbor passed an abundance of advice and plants over the fence. As we both worked, with our dogs wandering their respective territories, we talked, sometimes briefly, sometimes at length. I can imagine her, a retired second-grade teacher, calling a mushroom “Him” or an “Elf.” And when it came to gardening, I was like a second grader, absorbing knowledge. One year, when my kids were young, I grew a teepee’s worth of scarlet runner beans from the handful of saved beans she had handed me. I never harvested or cooked them, though: most gardening in those days took place under such time pressure that I could usually grow it or cook it but not both.
Many seasons later, there are a few things I know about gardening and many I don’t. Mainly, I’ve established a relationship with the scrappy patch of earth behind my house and learned to tease some food from it: tomatoes, kale, collards, chilies, chard, lemongrass, squash, herbs to cook with (rosemary, parsley, chives, thyme, oregano, basil, sage), and herbs to mostly look at (chamomile, lavender). My daughters have inherited my sense of connection to our catch-as-catch-can garden; we have been known to eat mystery vegetables that sprouted near the compost—memorably, a large object that looked like a melon but tasted like a cucumber. We still aren’t sure what it was.
Despite having developed a little confidence out there, I still think of the mushroom as a food you buy. One year, I bought a log injected with shiitake spores, supposed to provide a steady supply in a shady spot, but a wild animal gnawed much of the log away and only two or three shiitakes ever emerged. So mushrooms have no place in my efforts at cultivation or opportunistic harvesting. Yet, thanks to the Dickinson poem, I’ve begun to see the wild ones as remote friends—not so different from bumblebees and cardinals, and almost as quick to take wing.
This past spring, thinking of the “Grass” as “pleased / To have it intermit,” I let the wild fungi influence what I cooked—even though proper farmers grew the mushrooms that went into the pot. Here is what I’m making now, sometimes leaning East with dried shiitake, other times West with dried porcini; most often, I use a blend. This is a light, brothy soup that to me reflects the retreat of winter and the approach of summer, but if you prefer something more bisque-like, add the optional sour cream at the end for a milky appearance and flavor, or substitute actual cream for wintry richness.
Mushroom and Wild Rice Soup
1 Tbsp olive oil
1 sweet onion, minced
2 carrots, peeled and diced
2 ribs celery, diced
2 quarter-size slices fresh ginger
1/2 oz. dried mushrooms (any kind: shiitake, porcini, trumpet, oyster, etc., or a mixture)
1-1/2 lb. fresh mushrooms (cremini or white button, or a mixture), cleaned and sliced into bite-size pieces
2 cloves garlic, minced
2 Tbsp dry sherry or Shaoxing wine
1/2 cup wild rice
4 cups chicken, beef, or vegetable stock
1/4 cup minced chives
Salt and pepper
Sour cream to stir in at serving (optional)
Place dried mushrooms in a medium heatproof bowl. Pour 2 cups of hot water over the dried mushrooms and let soak 15 minutes.
In a large soup pot, warm the olive oil over medium heat. Add onion, carrot, celery, and ginger, reduce heat to medium-low, and cook, sprinkling with 1/4 tsp each salt and pepper and stirring occasionally, until softened, about 10 minutes. While vegetables cook, use a slotted spoon to lift the dried mushrooms out of their soaking liquid, then carefully decant most of the soaking liquid into another bowl, leaving liquid with sediment behind and discarding it. Reserve the soaked mushrooms and sediment-free mushroom liquid (you'll have about 1-1/2 cups liquid, but it's fine if you have a bit more or less).
To the vegetables in the soup pot, add soaked mushrooms, fresh mushrooms, minced garlic, and 1/2 tsp. salt, and cook, stirring often, for about 5 minutes. Add sherry and cook, stirring, for 5-10 more minutes, until liquid is thick and dark. While the vegetables cook, rinse wild rice in a sieve.
Add wild rice, reserved mushroom liquid, and stock to the soup pot. Bring to a boil, then lower to a lively simmer. Simmer for 45 minutes or until rice is cooked. Season to taste with salt and pepper. Add chives just before turning off the heat. If you like, stir a spoonful of sour cream into each bowl just before serving.
Makes about 6 six servings. If you have leftovers, the wild rice will soften and swell a little as it sits in the fridge, which isn’t a bad thing; the next day’s soup will be a little thicker, the wild rice more tender.
