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River Cottage Handbooks #1
Mushrooms
Taking us through the 72 species we are most likely to come across during forays in Britain's forests and clearings, this guide covers such old friends as the Chanterelle and Cep, as well as a whole colorful host of more unfamiliar names--edible species including the Velvet Shank, the Horn of Plenty, the Amethyst Deceiver, the Giant Puffball, and the Chicken in the Woods, and poisonous types such as the Sickener, the Death Cap, and the Destroying Angel. The handbook is completed by more than 30 simple and delicious mushroom recipes from the River Cottage team. With color photographs throughout, line drawings, and a user-friendly Key, this comprehensive and collectable guide is destined to be an indispensable household reference.
256 pages, Hardcover
First published September 3, 2007
7 people are currently reading
441 people want to read
About the author
John Wright
672 books41 followersLibrarian Note: There is more than one author in the Goodreads database with this name. ^1
John Wright is the author of the River Cottage Handbooks Mushrooms, Edible Seashore, Hedgerow and Booze and also The Naming of the Shrew, a book which explores the infuriating but fascinating topic of how and why plants, animals and fungi earn their Latin names. As well as writing for national publications, he often appears on the River Cottage series for Channel 4. He gives lectures on natural history and every year he takes around fifty 'forays', many at River Cottage HQ, showing people how to collect food - plants from the hedgerow, seaweeds and shellfish from the shore and mushrooms from pasture and wood. Over a period of nearly twenty-five years he has taken around six hundred such forays. Fungi are his greatest passion and he has thirty-five years' experience in studying them.
John Wright is a member of the British Mycological Society and a Fellow of the Linnaean Society.
John Wright is the author of the River Cottage Handbooks Mushrooms, Edible Seashore, Hedgerow and Booze and also The Naming of the Shrew, a book which explores the infuriating but fascinating topic of how and why plants, animals and fungi earn their Latin names. As well as writing for national publications, he often appears on the River Cottage series for Channel 4. He gives lectures on natural history and every year he takes around fifty 'forays', many at River Cottage HQ, showing people how to collect food - plants from the hedgerow, seaweeds and shellfish from the shore and mushrooms from pasture and wood. Over a period of nearly twenty-five years he has taken around six hundred such forays. Fungi are his greatest passion and he has thirty-five years' experience in studying them.
John Wright is a member of the British Mycological Society and a Fellow of the Linnaean Society.
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Displaying 1 - 10 of 10 reviews
January 22, 2019
A brilliant reference book, with great pictures and a full guide to mushroom recognition at the beginning of the book that is a valuable aide. Many edible and poisonous species from the British Isles are documented. Each individual species has its own short story, told with Wright's wry sense of humour and finessed with expert knowledge on how to recognise, find and use the mushrooms documented. Of all the reference books I have used for mushroom hunting, this is the best.
December 7, 2021
A really good book - it made me certain if I want to forage for mushrooms I will go on a course. Till then I will get them on line or in a shop. Discretion is the better part of valour.
September 13, 2022
Very helpful and great on a foraging expedition.
November 5, 2013
I love this guy. He is like a combination of my two grandads -- one has a dry sense of humour and a fondness for big words. The other was a keen mushroom hunter (and no, he didn't die from eating the wrong ones.) How many writers could make mushrooms entertaining? The key is easy to use and I have identified several mushrooms with it.
Here are some of my favorite descriptive excerpts:
The Blusher : "like a Queen's Scout whose brothers are all in a young offenders' institute, it has some very unfortunate relatives."
Parasol : "Now, whoever it was who said that life was too short to stuff a mushroom had clearly never come across the 'drumstick' Parasol. If anything ever cried out to be stuffed, it is these - they were clearly designed for this very purpose by a beneficent god. I will not burden you with a recipe here but merely point out that something involving bacon is not likely to disappoint."
Shaggy Inkcap : "This mushroom demonstrates such a strange fondness for road verges and roundabouts that I sometimes wonder where it made a living before such things existed...I cannot say that it is my favourite, tasting, as it does, of boiled polystyrene....pick only very young specimens that are white throughout. Not that they actually become poisonous with advancing age, but rather, like my Auntie Hilda, just become more and more unpleasant."
Brown Roll Rim : "In my opinion, this drab and downright disreputable fungus ... usually looks as though it should be helping the police with their enquiries and why anyone would wish to eat it is beyond me."
Red Cracked Bolete: "A friend who was known for her fondness for roadkill badger and garden snails, and whose frequent invitations to dinner always seemed to find me with a previous engagement, once collected a basket full of them. Her assessment, when I next saw her, that they tasted vile, I think we can take as definitive."
On mushroom smells: "Smell is such an important clue to the identity of many fungi that anyone deficient in olfactory sensitivity suffers a severe handicap.....The more subtle fungal odours have taxed the ingenuity of writers over the years and they have sometimes resorted to an excessive floridity of language. The most notorious example is for Hebeloma sacchariolens, once described as 'reminiscent of harlots', a characterisation that has always put me at a serious disadvantage in determining this species."
On mushroom names: "There are several fungi with Latin names that would be unwelcome in polite company. Two that spring readily to mind are the Stinkhorn (Phallus impudicus) and the Earth Star (Geastrum fornicatum). As you will know if you have ever seen one, the Stinkhorn hardly needs to justify its scientific appellation but our otherwise retiring Earth Star does seem to have some explaining to do. This particular Geastrum raises itself from the ground in an arch. The Latin for 'arched' is 'fornicatus' and it was underneath the arches that Roman ladies of the night could be found. I came slightly unstuck once at an adult education course I was running when I wrote the names of our finds on a table and forgot to wipe them off. During the week, an elderly art student found the foldaway table and complained bitterly about the 'filthy words' he had been exposed to."
Here are some of my favorite descriptive excerpts:
The Blusher : "like a Queen's Scout whose brothers are all in a young offenders' institute, it has some very unfortunate relatives."
Parasol : "Now, whoever it was who said that life was too short to stuff a mushroom had clearly never come across the 'drumstick' Parasol. If anything ever cried out to be stuffed, it is these - they were clearly designed for this very purpose by a beneficent god. I will not burden you with a recipe here but merely point out that something involving bacon is not likely to disappoint."
Shaggy Inkcap : "This mushroom demonstrates such a strange fondness for road verges and roundabouts that I sometimes wonder where it made a living before such things existed...I cannot say that it is my favourite, tasting, as it does, of boiled polystyrene....pick only very young specimens that are white throughout. Not that they actually become poisonous with advancing age, but rather, like my Auntie Hilda, just become more and more unpleasant."
Brown Roll Rim : "In my opinion, this drab and downright disreputable fungus ... usually looks as though it should be helping the police with their enquiries and why anyone would wish to eat it is beyond me."
Red Cracked Bolete: "A friend who was known for her fondness for roadkill badger and garden snails, and whose frequent invitations to dinner always seemed to find me with a previous engagement, once collected a basket full of them. Her assessment, when I next saw her, that they tasted vile, I think we can take as definitive."
On mushroom smells: "Smell is such an important clue to the identity of many fungi that anyone deficient in olfactory sensitivity suffers a severe handicap.....The more subtle fungal odours have taxed the ingenuity of writers over the years and they have sometimes resorted to an excessive floridity of language. The most notorious example is for Hebeloma sacchariolens, once described as 'reminiscent of harlots', a characterisation that has always put me at a serious disadvantage in determining this species."
On mushroom names: "There are several fungi with Latin names that would be unwelcome in polite company. Two that spring readily to mind are the Stinkhorn (Phallus impudicus) and the Earth Star (Geastrum fornicatum). As you will know if you have ever seen one, the Stinkhorn hardly needs to justify its scientific appellation but our otherwise retiring Earth Star does seem to have some explaining to do. This particular Geastrum raises itself from the ground in an arch. The Latin for 'arched' is 'fornicatus' and it was underneath the arches that Roman ladies of the night could be found. I came slightly unstuck once at an adult education course I was running when I wrote the names of our finds on a table and forgot to wipe them off. During the week, an elderly art student found the foldaway table and complained bitterly about the 'filthy words' he had been exposed to."
October 18, 2023
John Wright is a really funny writer. I have had this book for years (and dipped into it a number of times before) and I just meant to quickly look a mushroom up and ended up completely absorbed in it. I read it right through from beginning to end again.
I've found this a really, really helpful introduction to the mushrooms I most commonly find on my walks, both the edible and the not so friendly ones. (I actually don't forage, I just like finding mushrooms!)
I have marked this down one star purely for the recipes in the second half of the book. I have had this book for years and cooked like...two of them, purely because they are either a real faff (like making ravioli or battering and deep frying individual mushrooms) or because they involve ingredients I'm just not going to have around like rabbit, pheasant, venison or truffles...admittedly, you're supposed to find these but...really?! If this is your bag, you can translate my rating to 5 stars.
I've found this a really, really helpful introduction to the mushrooms I most commonly find on my walks, both the edible and the not so friendly ones. (I actually don't forage, I just like finding mushrooms!)
I have marked this down one star purely for the recipes in the second half of the book. I have had this book for years and cooked like...two of them, purely because they are either a real faff (like making ravioli or battering and deep frying individual mushrooms) or because they involve ingredients I'm just not going to have around like rabbit, pheasant, venison or truffles...admittedly, you're supposed to find these but...really?! If this is your bag, you can translate my rating to 5 stars.
August 1, 2014
The first half of the book I got all excited and inspired. I know that one! I've seen that one! Oh, that one is edible too?!
The second half of the book, on the poisonous and often look-alike mushrooms put a necessary damper on my enthusiasm. I am still going mushrooming with an expert...
The book is well-written and comes with a very handy identification flowchart - a smaller version of the author's 500 page chart.
Now I need to find an equivalently good tome in Hungarian.
The second half of the book, on the poisonous and often look-alike mushrooms put a necessary damper on my enthusiasm. I am still going mushrooming with an expert...
The book is well-written and comes with a very handy identification flowchart - a smaller version of the author's 500 page chart.
Now I need to find an equivalently good tome in Hungarian.
August 14, 2012
The first one in these handbooks I acquired.
Ideal in this size as you can stick it in your pocket when out ' shrooming ' , vital in order to identify from the excellent photos, which are safe.
From advice as to kit, where to look, identification and good recipes it's a lot in a little package.
Foreword by Hugh F - W
Ideal in this size as you can stick it in your pocket when out ' shrooming ' , vital in order to identify from the excellent photos, which are safe.
From advice as to kit, where to look, identification and good recipes it's a lot in a little package.
Foreword by Hugh F - W
July 23, 2010
John Wright made me laugh lots with this charming little book. I hope to go out picking at some point soon. Mushrooms FTW!
January 5, 2016
A very entertaining mushrooming book! Wish it were safe to use it in the US, but I wrote to the author and he said best not to.
December 3, 2013
by far the best shroom book I own.
clear and well organised with stunning recipes
clear and well organised with stunning recipes
Displaying 1 - 10 of 10 reviews