The Morel of This Story Is a Mushroom

Of course, none of these folks gives away any useful clues about where they're going. Morel hunters are famously secretive, known to hide their little gathering-bags from view if they bump into strangers in the woods. Houk didn't mind taking me along last week because he'd already hunted out his prime spots. We were pioneering new ground.

After all his years on the prowl, Houk just follows his instincts. "You want mature woods," he said. "Poplar trees are good. I like to look where there are fallen logs, and I like to work uphill because you can see them better at eye level. When I go downhill, I always think I'm walking right by them."

We followed a horse trail for a quarter-mile, then Houk abruptly stopped. "This looks pretty good," he said, and plowed uphill into the woods, brushing away a tangle of greenbriers. "There's one!" he said, pointing to a thicket. "Where there's one, there must be more . . ."

And so there were -- one and two and three and four. We found a couple of pounds in the next hour or so, tucked away alongside fallen, rotten tree limbs, in the leaf duff or standing proud in the dappled sunlight. I say we, but that's stretching things. It takes a practiced eye to spot a two-inch-tall fungus in the tangled forest floor. If I found one for Houk's 20, I was doing well.

What to do with these little, wild delicacies? Eat 'em, that's what. The only peril in morel hunting is something called a false morel, which is poisonous if eaten raw but quite rare in these parts and fairly distinctive in appearance. Houk said he'd only seen a few in a lifetime of morel hunting.

Obviously, it's a good idea to do some research before eating any wild mushrooms, but morels seem fairly safe, and delicious.

I brought home a pound and gently sauteed them in butter with a bit of salt, then added some cream to make a sauce to pour over the last of the venison roasts from last year's deer season.

Houk has a number of more complicated recipes, including a spinach and morel souffle, Cornish game hens stuffed with wild rice and morels, and his standard "breakfast of champions," scrambled eggs with sauteed morels and shallots. He dries most of his catch, stores it and reconstitutes the morels later by soaking them in water. "They're almost as good that way as they are fresh," he says.

Houk reckons morel season will continue for another week or so in Rock Creek Park, after which he'll start lobbying for permission to go to the Blue Ridge, where the hatch comes later. "I'll start chasing the season out there if my wife lets me," he said. "But she might just say, 'Enough!' "