Chaga ✦

Chaga

What it is

The black lump on a birch is not a fruiting body at all but a sterile mass of fungal tissue and wood, armoured in melanin, and Siberian households boiled it as a tea long before anyone called it a supplement. It smoulders rather than flames, and in the north it was carried as a fire-ember.

In the kitchen

Never boil it hard: break it into chunks and hold the water just under a simmer for two to three hours for a dark, tannic liquid you can use as a stock. The same chunks give three or four extractions - dry them between uses.

Goes with

Birch syrup Honey Coffee Dark chocolate Cream Juniper berry Lingonberry Rye berries

In season alongside

Doraji (balloon flower root) Strawberry-tree honey Walnut

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