Lion's Mane Mushrooms - an Extraordinary Food Find

On my last visit to the farmer's market, I bought a bag of mushrooms. A "variety bag" of sorts, which several types I had never heard of or encountered in person.

It was a bold move for me. As a chef, I have something of a love-hate relationship with mushrooms, or at least, something of a wary one. I enjoy mushrooms a great deal, but only certain kinds and only when cooked in certain ways. Some of the more exotic and richly flavored types, like shittakes or morales, are a little too rich for me and can even make me feel sick to my stomach. But somehow, I always feel like I really should be able to appreciate something other than the button and portabella varieties that I find in my grocery store, so I keep trying.

Thus, it was with a sense of trepidation and adventure that I brought my bag of mysterious fungi home with me. It contained no shittakes or morales or truffles, but it did contain varieties that were definitely off the beaten supermarket path. The most unusual of these where also the ones I was most dubious about.

They were called "lion's mane" mushrooms, and they hardly looked like mushrooms at all. They were white and if they resembled anything, they looked like cauliflower or perhaps some albino variety of sea-sponge. The proprietor had been extolling their virtues to me.

"You don't eat these for the taste," he said, "you eat them for the texture. They take on the flavor of what you cook them with."

I wasn't impressed, and I doubt I would have taken any with me had they not been included with the others. Nonetheless, once I had them, I was curious (if only because they were so friggin' odd looking). So I gave them a good scrub, diced them into small pieces and fried them up in olive oil with some fresh tomatoes, basil, garlic, and onions. I served all this over a roasted garlic pasta (also acquired that morning) and when I tried this dish, I was astounded.

Lion's mane's mushrooms have a texture like tender meat. What flavor they do have on their own is very subtly nutty, but that's not what I was most impressed by. When the guy told me that they took on the flavor of what they were cooked with, I was expecting a similar experience to what you get when cooking with tofu - mostly bland with a faint echo of the other ingredients.

Not so with lion's manes. Each bite of this mushroom was an explosion of tomato-y, basil-y, onion-y, garlic-y goodness, like having a super-concentrated bite of all five ingredients at once. I've marinated other mushrooms for hours and not had such flavorful results as I did with these and just a few minutes of cooking.

And yes, the meaty texture on top of this made them them a delight to eat. These mushrooms would make an excellent substitute for meat in vegan and vegetarian cooking.

So I'm glad I took a chance on this odd-looking little vegetable. Now I just hope I can catch them at the market again, because I'm already planning how I'd cook them next. Maybe they'd be good with Mexican seasonings...