A wild mushroom forager in the Isle of Man has found what has been identified as the first porcini mushroom of the season in the United Kingdom.
Bill Dale, journalist and photographer, found the rare mushroom earlier this week in a northern plantation.
“I have never found porcini in August before, never mind July, so I realised this might be a very early find,” he said. “However, the weather has been so weird this year I suppose anything could happen.
“So, before I made any claim I contacted one of the country’s top mycologists, Daniel Butler, the author of a number of books on mushrooms and fungi whom I met when myself and my partner attended a course on wild mushrooms in Wales three years ago.”
Daniel Butler’s website yesterday confirmed that the Manx find was the first official notification of a porcini to be found anywhere in the country this year, and described it as “exciting news”.
Porcini mushrooms are considered to be the most desired of all wild mushrooms, and fetch a hefty price in specialist London markets. They are also notoriously difficult to find - and mushroom foragers rarely divulge where they have been sourced.
Top restaurants pay huge sums for fresh porcini, which are used in luxury dishes. Dried porcini - also very expensive - are more frequently used in cooking, almost all being imported from Italy where the mushrooms are much more common than the UK.
