Sonoma County Mushroom Camp

If three days of mushrooms, mushrooms and more mushrooms sounds marvelous to you, then you’re the perfect candidate for the Sonoma County Mycological Association (SOMA) Mushroom Camp being held Jan. 16-18 at CYO Camp McGucken in Occidental. It’s an earthy adventure of foraging for wild fungi, workshops on cultivation and craft making, and seminars on such topics as “Brown-Spored Genera – An Overview.”

Yet if mycelia appeal to you less as a scientific study than as something magical in your mouth, you’ll still want to sign up right away.

Besides hunting for truffles, there are demonstrations on how to cook with the tasty fruiting delicacies – featuring topics like “MycoChef’s Secret Ingredient: Porcini Powder,” and recipes such as forest and farm nettle soup, mushroom mu shu and New Wave tamales.

Presumably, the instructors will be detailed in pointing out which of sometimes similar looking mushrooms are good to eat (fresh, young, well-cooked shaggy parasols, yes) and which are not (chlorophyllum molybdite green-spored parasols, no).

Yet the most delicious highlight – and reason enough to sign up for at least the Sunday, Jan. 17 session – is the celebratory feast of all things mushroom. The SOMA Culinary Group has coordinated with MycoChef Patrick Hamilton to create a most extraordinary supper, in an Asian theme ranging from Indonesia, to China, to Thailand, to Korea.

The party starts with hors d’oeuvres of pickled mushrooms, porcini chapati, spicy sambal, jalapeno and lime pickles, and Korean kimchi with mushrooms.

For an appetizer, it’s mieng kum, where you fill lettuce leaves with wondrous little bits and dunk them in a savory sauce.

Main plates, meanwhile, marry mushrooms in a nasi goreng Indonesian fried rice of bean sprouts, cabbage, chiles, mint, basil, and peanuts; tuck them in spring rolls with rice noodles, shrimp, carrot, cabbage, scallions and cilantro; and nestle them in egg rolls with pork, scallions, garlic, ginger and egg.

Next up are satays of shrimp, chicken, beef and mushroom, followed by Korean garlicky spinach and warm mushroom salad.

Even dessert gets the ‘shroom action, featuring Candy Cap fortune cookies, sticky rice cakes with tangerine peel infused red bean sauce, and poached pear in five-spice wine syrup. Candy Caps are distinctively fragrant mushrooms, perfumed uncommonly like maple syrup.

The dinner is open only to official campers, but you can register for either single-day or full-weekend options, with prices ranging from $110 for Saturday only to $300 for the full weekend including lodging in a cabin set amongst 225 acres of tan oak, madrone, redwood, and Douglas fir, plus, likely, plenty of mushroom patches. The Sunday session is $135.

But hurry – mushrooms are a popular passion, and registrations are requested received/postmarked by Wednesday, January 6, 2010.

Details: somamushrooms.org.