“Mushrooms are the muse of the forest,” the late, celebrated Catalan chef Santi Santamaria once wrote in his Sunday La Vanguardia newspaper magazine column, “that free us from the temptation to forget that nature is the creator and, at the same time, the most colossal, seductive, and mysterious creation. Only nature surpasses nature.”
I love that kind of over-the-top sentiment that wild mushrooms have the ability to trigger—even in the likes of Santamaria, who had access to the finest of nature’s products for his three-Michelin-starred restaurant Can Fabes in Sant Celoni, about halfway between Barcelona and Girona in the Montseny.
The intense, earthy flavors of mushrooms are well-loved across Spain, from chefs like Santamaria to school children, and legions of Spaniards from the Basque Country to Andalucía head to the hills to collect them themselves. For many, looking for setas or hongos, as some types are called in Spain, has tradition and ritual—getting up early, heading to a favorite, often secret spot in the hills (whose exact location will never be divulged), and walking and searching. Dark-gold rebozuelos (chanterelles) or meaty, brownish orange níscalos (delicious milk caps) are cut with a knife and gently set into a wicker basket to take back to the kitchen. Autumn and early winter is the main season, but there are varieties that appear in spring—most famously morels—and even during summer. Some are toxic, of course, and one should never eat a found mushroom unless it can be positively identified as a safe species. (Recently, there has been a spate of deaths and serious illnesses from urban foragers in Barcelona consuming the wrong kinds, reminders of the potential potency of the toxins.)
Mushrooms have an intense flavor that corrals the forest’s humid essence. Every Spanish cook has a preferred way to prepare them—with pig’s trotters, stewed with rabbit, scrambled with eggs (my own favorite; see page 130), or stuffed into cannelloni pasta (see page 160). For many, the best is also the simplest—sautéed in olive oil and seasoned with coarse sea salt, garlic, and some chopped fresh parsley, and perhaps a bit of jamón to give it a savory kick. After devouring a plate of these following a successful day’s mushroom hunt, it is hard not to wax at least a little poetically a la Santamaria on these forest pleasures.