Mushroom story

 The mushrooms can be divided into fresh, dried, frozen and canned mushrooms. The fresh mushrooms taste lighter and tender. The dried mushrooms tastes stronger in flavor, and it can recover by soaking in the water. After recovering it can be used for soup, seasoning, or garnishing. And the cooking methods can be steam, boil, stew and barbecue. Due to its easy storage and stronger favoring people are more likely to try dried mushrooms for their cooking adventures.

The widely eaten mushrooms in Europe and Japan are chanterelle, morel, shiitake, matsutake and truffles, the most expensive one in the mushrooms family. These wild mushrooms all have unique powerful aroma and inviting taste. Since they are growing in the remote mountain areas they are clean from pollution but difficult to be found. In Europe, people used to bring pigs or dogs to look for morel and truffles. Of course the hunters must be quick to pick before the animals eat up these mushrooms.

Maitake mushroom (hen of the wood, Grifola frondosa or dancing mushroom): it’s said that in ancient Japan people valued maitake as silver and when they found it in the woods they would dance to celebrate. So in Japan maitake means dancing mushroom.

Truffle mushroom: Truffle is regarded as most expensive mushroom as it is purely wild with very little production. Moreover, truffle changes growth area in the wild forests year by year. Since its mysterious and difficult to be found people have to bring dogs or pigs with them to look for them.

Matsutake: In the Japanese eyes, matsutake is the king of all mushrooms. Due to its limited production in the wild woods and unbelievably high price in Japan people only eat matsutake very occasionally. They love to add a few pieces of matsutake in tempura, in soup or even in steamed rice. The best quality matsutake are grown in Japan, Korea and China.