Customer Reviews

The Complete Mushroom Book: Savory Recipes for Wild and Cultivated Varieties

5 star:		(3)
4 star:		(3)
3 star:		(0)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

This book by an Italian, Antonio Carluccio, transplanted to England covers the botanical classifications of edible mushrooms and fungi, tips on collecting, a guide to identifying edible and toxic mushrooms, and a large collection of mushroom recipes. It has many things to recommend it, but it also should be given more than a cursory thought if you have an interest in purchasing the book.

As a compulsive book collector, I often justify the purchase of a book solely on the presence of one good idea comprising not much more than a page or two, but you may not have such liberal criteria when laying out the long green for a book, especially for bone white plants.

The devil's advocate view of this book is that:

It's coverage of mushroom identification and distinction of culinary from toxic is weak in that the book does not give a consistant photographic coverage to all species. I would be extremely nervous if I knew someone was using only this book as a field guide. A quick comparison photographs for the edible boletus badius on page 33 with the toxic russula emetica on page 71 shows how similar two very different mushrooms can look. The comparison is scarier when you see that the two species flourish at the same time of the year. My main point is that to a non-mycologist, this appears to be a very inadequate field guide. Much better would be one species per page with much more consistant coverage over all species.

While the title of the book refers to all mushrooms, it's emphasis is clearly on wild mushrooms. About 75 percent of all the recipes call for wild mushrooms, primarily morels and many of the recipes calling for cultivated species call for unusual or expensive species, up to and including truffles.

So what does that leave for the non-mushroom hunter living in Brooklyn? Here are some reasons for buying this book:

The well written text and good photography provides a worthy vicarious experience of the thrills of mushroom hunting in Devon, England.

The recipes give several worthy methods for preserving mushrooms, including drying and pickling. This is the material I would pick to primarily justify the purchase. I have not seen it anywhere else.

Even if you substitute the humble Pennsylvania button mushroom or the slightly more upscale cremini for the blue stocking morels and procinis, you get a wealth of recipes to add to a vegetarian diet. The recipes draw heavily from French and Italian cuisine, but they include a broad selection from various oriental cuisines as well. Even a fair number of German and Spanish dishes are included. Oddly, there seems to be practically no recipes for the portobello.

You also get useful practical tips on handling and eating mushrooms. The book makes it clear that almost every mushroom is healthier to eat cooked than to eat raw. I have heard it said that even our darling little Kennet Square button mushrooms have toxins which must be cooked to remove the toxins. Give the raw mushrooms a pass the next time you hit the salad bar. The information on taking special care with raw mushrooms and alcohol is pretty chilling, but again, as testified by the long popularity of Coq au Vin, this danger is eliminated by thorough cooking.

In general, I would rate the culinary advice on mushroom technique to be very useful.

Since I am very fond of cookbooks on single subjects, I recommend this book for the recipes and techniques and background on mushroom culture and collection in the wild, as long as you keep the wild part to your armchair. The price is a bit high, so I would not click on the order button without some check on alternate titles, especially the volume by Jane Grigson, `The Mushroom Feast' which I have not yet had the pleasure to sample.

Very well written book....great pictures of most mushrooms and their edibility...
The author is certainly an expert in this area...
Also got some great recipes out of this book.....

Antonio Carluccio is clearly an aficionado, from collecting to preparing, he shows us how to honor the magic of fungi. This is not just a cookbook, the first half of the book covers foraging and collecting, with clear descriptions and pictures of each mushroom and it's troublesome look alikes. The second half is devoted to great recipes designed to really show off each mushroom's particular flavor and texture. Rare is the chef who can throttle back his "chops" to let the delicate flavor of each fungi be the star. "If you can't taste it, you waste it" does not apply to Carluccio's recipes.
As a 15+ year forager and obsessed amateur chef, I feel confident in recommending this book highly to anyone who wants to know how to get the most out of their mushrooms.

Amateurs are people who love their subject. And from my experience most mushroom hunters love mushrooms for many reasons. There is a lot to love.

This book is a warm rich celebration of the that affection. The recipes and the photos of each dish make your mouth water. the photos of Carluccio wandering in golden-hued forests, or photos of him cradling a large cauliflower mushroom with a pleased smile, impart not just a knowledge of the subject, but a feeling of the best possible day in the woods, a feeling of something almost beyond everything ordinary.

This book captures the ethos and ideal of mushroom hunting. Sumptuous photos of rustic charm are not all though, the text is well written, interesting, amiable, and informative. You get the impression that you have been taken into a confidence, that you are being let in on some secrets. Reading this book is a bit like reading a dusty sacred text with golden page edges. And the experience borders on the sacred because of that loving treatment of the subject. I'm not sure if a non-mushroomer would get this, or if it is a joy one can only enter into if you are passionate about the subject.

I don't know, but I do know that I would recommend this book as THE second book to buy on mushrooms. The first would be any of the good field guides, especially ones specifically for your area, and some are better than others, but I can't imagine any book capturing better the love and lore of mushroom hunting and mushroom eating.

It is a great book, not only for the different kinds of mushrooms that the book has in it, but also it teaches you which is the best way to cook them on each case.And of course the chef is a very well known in England and Italy.

This book is what the title says - The complete mushroom book. It is the only book you need. Read it, learn and you can be safe picking all mushrooms in Sweden and the rest of the world. And then you can make the most delicius dishes with help from Antonio Carluccio's recipes. He is the most marveleus mushroom expert both in the woods, fields and citchen. I am very impressed!
Bo Johnsson