Chicken of the woods ✦

Polypore soufré

What it is

It is a brown-rot bracket: it eats the heartwood of a living oak from inside while the tree stands on for years, sulphur-yellow shelf after shelf returning on the same trunk each summer. The flesh pulls apart in fibres instead of slicing, which is why it is cooked as a protein and not as a mushroom.

In the kitchen

Take only the soft outer two or three centimetres of a young bracket: once the margin is no longer flexible the whole thing is woody and no cooking will fix it. Cook it right through, twenty minutes at least, and try a small portion first — a minority of people react to it, especially from conifers or eucalyptus.

Goes with

Butter Lemon Thyme Garlic Cream Paprika

In season alongside

King oyster Pink oyster Salt marsh lamb Allis shad Japanese abalone Bamboo shoot

Something wrong here, or missing? Tell us