I ate a few of those Purple Corts tonight and was not impressed. On the bright side, I wasn’t killed, either. Yet.

First I dry-sauteed the two small ones. This is a method I often use for cooking fresh-picked mushrooms, as they contain plenty of moisture on their own. Dry-sauteeing lets you taste the mushroom itself without any butter, oil, shallots, wine, or whatever else you might use when sauteeing mushrooms. In the case of the Purple Corts, this was not a big advantage. Their texture was pleasing, as was their rich black color (I could imagine using them in pasta dishes for contrast), but they did not have a lot of taste, and what they did have was on the bitter side.

Unable to leave well enough alone, I sauteed one of the bigger ones with a little butter, a splash of wine, and just a hint of garlic–a clove swiped around the pan. The result was a moist mushroom that tasted like ever-so-slightly bitter butter and garlic. Made a beautiful presentation, but I did not even finish it.  I’m going to dry the rest of them and see if they will work in a soup later on.

I now feel rather bad about having picked them all, but I won’t do so again. And I have read some things online from people who like eating them, so it was worth trying.

Chanterelles tomorrow! Now there I’m on familiar fungal territory.