RIGHT ON THE BUTTON

North County growers feed Americans’ hunger for exotic mushrooms
By Elena Gaona, STAFF WRITER

SAN MARCOS—It’s not always winter here, of course.

But don’t tell that to the slim creamy-white enoki mushrooms growing in San Marcos warehouse as if they were in an enchanted—and cold —Japanese forest.

They are among tons of mushrooms produced every year in San Diego County- testament to the increasing popularity of edible fungi among everyone from pizza fans to gourmet cooks.

And its not just your typical white variety anymore.

Growers such as Golden Gourmet Mushrooms on Marilyn Lane in San Marcos are using specialized techniques to produce exotic varieties that are catching on in this country.

To simulate mountainous areas where enoki mushrooms and other exotic varieties grow, Golden Gourmet uses tens of thousands of small plastic bottles in a maze of growing rooms cooled to between 40 and 58 degrees. At CCD Mushroom Farm in Fallbrook, meaty brown shiitake mushrooms emerge from synthetic oak logs made from sawdust.

The United States is the world’s second-largest producer of mushrooms, after China. Among the states, California is second, behind Pennsylvania.

American mushroom growers produced 857 million pounds in the 2003-2004 season, up 1 percent from the previous year, according to the U.S. Department of Agriculture. They were worth $920 million, an increase of 3 percent.

After 1965, consumption in the United States quadrupled to nearly 4 pounds per person by 2001, according to the U.S. Department of Agriculture’s Economic Research Service.

Agaricus bisporus, the common white button mushroom, still makes up about 87 percent of U.S. sales. But more exotic varieties, already big sellers in Japan and Europe, are becoming increasingly popular. Growers are trying to encourage, and profit, from that trend.

In addition to enoki’s, which have slim stems and small pearl caps that gather to form snowpuff-looking clusters, Golden Gourmet also specializes in:

• King Eryngii, also known as the King Oyster or King Trumpet mushroom. Their thick stems are topped by small button caps that extend into mini upright trumpets, and have a firm and chewy texture.

• Hon-shimeji, also known as the beech mushroom because it often grows on beech trees. It is recognizable by meaty dark caps on white stems. It has a mildly sweet, nutty taste.

• Maitake, a very large mushroom that grows in the mountains of northeastern Japan. It has no cap. Dark fronds give it a flowery appearance, and it has a rich, woodsy taste.

At Golden Gourmet, all the exotic varieties are grown in plastic bottles filled with sawdust, yeast and shredded corn cobs, a method developed in Japan.

After being pasteurized in a tunnel of hot steam, the bottles are inoculated with mushroom mycelium, a threadlike mass also called spawn, clinging to grain or rice. The bottles are capped and stacked on carts that are pushed along misty concrete corridors into a series of foggy cold rooms. The caps are removed, and the wintery temperatures signal that it’s time to grow.

Within five or six days the tiny mushroom bloom appears, a stage known as “pinning.” Each variety has a different growing time. Enoki, for example, mature in about 40 days. Workers then cut, clip and seal the mushrooms in plastic pack ages ready for restaurants or grocery stories.

With annual sales now of about $4 million, Golden Gourmet also plans to grow perhaps six-fold over the next two years, co-owner Craig Anderson said.

“It’s consumer awareness” of mushrooms that is pushing the company’s expansion, Anderson said.

“I lived six years in Asia and before that in Europe. Consumption there is 20, 30 pounds per capita. Here it’s 4 pounds,” but growing.

Once a largely unknown variety, the enoki is now found in many supermarkets. “It’s a mainstream mushroom now,” Anderson said.

Golden Gourmet is counting on dramatically increasing its sales by making eryngii, shemeji and maitake mushrooms just as popular.

To that end, general manager Steve Farrar leads tours through the farm to acquaint people with lesser-know varieties. (For more information, go to www.goldengourmetmushrooms.com)

“In the U.S. we’re a little bit of a microbe-phobic society,” Farrar said to a class of chefs touring the farm last month.

While other countries enjoy a variety of mushrooms, Americans have tended to stick with the familiar button variety, Farrar said. It’s time to get adventurous, he told the tour group. ‘There’s a whole world of textures and flavors and aromas you can explore,” he said.

The visitors were awed by the rows and rows of unblemished blooms.

“I thought it would be dirt and greenhouses. It’s so not like that and it’s really cool,” said Eddie Ledesma, 21, a senior at the Culinary Institute of America in New York. “It’s just so amazing how clean and perfect they are.”

Beds not bottles

The common white button mushroom, the only kind grown at Mountain Meadow Mushroom on North Broadway in Escondido, remains the industry’s stalwart. They are also
increasing in popularity.

Unlike more exotic varieties, button mushrooms grow in large beds. Each of Mountain Meadows growing rooms has 14 beds arranged in tall stacks and the air has a slightly sweet, spoiled odor.

But don’t call them manure beds, at least if Mountain Meadow vice president Roberto Ramirez is around.

“It’s not manure,” Ramirez said. “Every time I hear that it drives me crazy.”

The beds are filled with a compost made from discarded Del Mar Racetrack straw. It contains traces of manure and urine, but by the time the straw is mixed with cottonseed and goes through weeks of outdoor composting in long tall rows, it’s just decaying organic matter.

The compost beds are heat pasteurized in the growing rooms before being inoculated The mycelium is tilled into the compost and allowed to rest about twelve days before it’s covered with a peat moss mixture, watered and given an additional week to rest.

Air is then forced through the beds to flush out the carbon dioxide and soon the mushrooms start emerging, some tiny, some large. Pickers, standing on ladders with miner’s lamps on their shoulder, harvest three mushrooms at a time with a gentle yank and an expert snip to give stems a clean cut. As they work, bits of mushroom pieces rain on the ground. Each bed is harvested three times.

Mountain Mushroom has about $7.5 million in annual sales, Ramirez said. It had six growing rooms when it started 38 years ago and now has 26. “People are more aware of mushrooms and sales keep increasing,” he said.

But even Ramirez acknowledges that he was once not a fan of edible fungi.

“I didn’t really like mushrooms when I started working here,” he said, “but my wife started cooking them and now I do

Elena Gaone (760)737-7575; elena.gaona@uniontrib.com

CAPTIONS:
King Eryngii mushrooms are distinguished by thick stems and small-button caps.

Racks of bottles containing the raw material for growing mushrooms were stacked for sterilization in an autoclave by Jose Antonio Espinoza at Golden Gourmet Mushrooms.

Culinary students from New York visiting Golden Gourmet Mushrooms in San Marcos were given a closer look at hon-shimeji mushrooms - also known as beech mushrooms - by Steve Farrar, general manager of the facility. Charlie Neuman / Union-Tribune photos

A King Eryngii mushroom, noted for having a thick stem topped by small cap, was given a close inspection by culinary student Kristen Robinson.

Inside the fruiting room of Golden Gourmet Mushrooms in San Marcos, general manager Steve Farrar tended to King Eryngii mushrooms. Local growers are trying to encourage, and profit, from American’s increasing interest in exotic varieties of mushrooms. Charlie Neuman/Union Tribune photos