During the rains, the people of Wayanad, as they walk under the trees, keep an eye out for mushrooms. The fallen leaves crumbling on the ground provide a rich food for fungi, which turn the leaves to compost for the trees to thrive on. In our neighborhood, large brownish yellow mushrooms shoot up like umbrellas, and they enrich the local cuisine with appetizing meals.
At the end of the rains, however, nature blesses us with an array of tiny, snow-white enoki mushrooms which come up by the thousands – an awesome sight indeed!
Enoki mushrooms, known as arikoon or rice mushrooms, are a favorite of the people, for they are perhaps the cleanest and tastiest of all the endemic edible mushrooms of Wayanad. When well cooked, they turn soft, but retain their unique crunchy texture.
Pushing out through the ground and through the leaf mold overnight, they shine like clusters of brilliant stars at dawn! We collect them in the morning, snipping off the root tips which hold on to a bit of earth, before dropping them into the baskets.
They are then rinsed thoroughly and cooked. Some of the most loved dishes are spicy mushroom fry, mushroom biryani, hot mushroom pickles, mushroom soup, mushroom samosas, mushroom cutlets, alambya ambat, mushroom burgers or sandwiches, mushroom fried rice, and mushroom pizzas.
When there are plenty of trees in your compound, and the ground is not tilled, but only mulched naturally, the texture of the soil changes and becomes full of humus; more moist, rich and alive! Mushrooms thrive in such soils, as do beneficial microorganisms, inducing health and robust growth in plants and trees, tasty and abundant produce, and more water in your well!
