From the responses, the team learned that the ALS patients were not the only mushroom foragers in town, but they shared an affinity for a particular species that local interviewees without ALS said they never touched: the false morel.
From the responses, the team learned that the ALS patients were not the only mushroom foragers in town, but they shared an affinity for a particular species that local interviewees without ALS said they never touched: the false morel.
Oh no.
https://fi.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Korvasieni this one
We call it “the ear mushroom”, and while it was highly priced and I was taught to look for them, I was also taught it’s poisonous and has to be… (one moment I don’t have the English term for a thing, this hasn’t happened in a while, but I don’t cook mushrooms so) blanched (oh wait really? In Finnish there’s a specific term blanching that is imo mostly only used in context of shrooms “ryöppäys”) for three times, iirc. Edit I checked and you boil them, blanching is more a short term thing but the Finnish term is bendy but anyway I was taught they are poison but also good eatin. At least Twice for five minutes, changing the water in between to fresh and then discarding it. Three parts water to one part shrooms at least.
So yeah. It’s a priced and edible mushroom, but also it is poisonous. For no reason I assume Japanese people might talk to their kids about blowfish in much the same way my dad talked about korvasieni. As in you’d let the kid know not to eat it, but also talk about how good it would be to eat one.
I don’t think I’ve ever even had any.
That sounds similar to lupin beans.
In America, we have pokeweed, which everyone knows is toxic, but people eat it after boiling 3 times (I don’t think we have another word for that).
A lot of foraging books talk about boiling and/or soaking to make things edible, but usually it’s to remove bitterness/astringency like with acorns. For something neurotoxic, I don’t think I’d trust it, though.