American Way
September 2020
“Looks like a turtle beat you to it,” says Alan Muskat, crouched to the ground, analyzing the chomp marks on the Collybia mushroom rising a few inches off the loamy forest floor. This is a shame, as Alan informs me that this particular fungus is quite tasty, and correctly intuits that I have no appetite for a reptile’s leftovers. Alan, though, doesn’t seem to mind (after all, he’s eaten roadkill groundhog before), and provides my first lesson as he takes a nibble: “Foragers can’t be choosers.”
Most people come to Cloud 9 Farm, just 20 minutes south of downtown Asheville, to pick berries in the meticulous rows or for a weekend in the on-site cabins—but Alan’s not most people. The self-proclaimed “philosoforager” and “stand-up mycomedian” has been running No Taste Like Home, one of the largest foraging ecotour companies in the world since 1995. It’s on such a tour that we find ourselves bushwhacking through a thicket armed with a nifty double-edged brush/knife tool. We spend an hour filling our baskets with our dinner’s ingredients: leatherback milkcap mushrooms that “smell like fish,” brittlegill mushrooms that “smell like Goldfish crackers,” and greens, such as sourwood, sassafras and wood sorrel.
As we make our way back to the farm, Alan tells me the tale of a mushroom he spotted the week before, but when he scurries over to the field’s edge to find it, it’s missing. “Foraging is a lesson in abundance and nonattachment,” Alan explains. “Here today, gone tomorrow.” He shrugs, but his eyes get wide as he tells me that he has a “big, big surprise.”
The historic Omni Grove Park Inn, built in 1913, with its stacked granite stone exterior and 36-foot-high rustic fireplaces, seems an unexpectedly luxurious destination for Alan, who is dressed in sneakers. From the resort’s Sunset Terrace restaurant I start snapping photos of the purple mountains in the distance. “This isn’t the surprise,” he says and ushers me out the front door, past the valet and down a footpath that hugs a gurgling brook. We get to talking about his commitment issues (“Farming forces you to put down roots; foraging lets you stay nomadic”) when Alan stops.
“We were talking and I almost missed it!” he exclaims, pointing to an ivory-colored Berkeley’s polypore (a.k.a. stump blossom) the size of an ottoman. Alan rips off a piece for me. “A bit acrid, right?” he asks before promptly spitting his portion out. “You didn’t swallow that, did you?!” I had. “I’m sure you’ll be fine,” he says. “They’re edible, just taste better when cooked.” I sigh. Stand-up mycomedian, indeed.
On the drive into town, my stomach starts to rumble. For “lunch,” Alan is taking me to the Dr. George Washington Carver Edible Park in the East End neighborhood. Instead of a maître d’ we’re greeted by a herd of goats grazing on overgrowth in a fenced-off section (a sentient alternative to lawn mowers, I’m told). The park is a patch of fruit trees and shrubs with a winding pathway. Patrons graze on apples, peaches and blackberries for sustenance. Alan rips out a burdock root and sucks on the stem. “I hope you like bitter!” he exclaims. I try to nod convincingly as my burger cravings reach fever pitch.
When we hand off our leaves and mushroom caps to Ashleigh Shanti, the chef de cuisine at Benne on Eagle in downtown Asheville, I’m not quite sure what she’ll make of them—a bird’s nest, perhaps? But Shanti, known for fusing African and Appalachian cuisines, is heralded for her thoughtfulness and creativity. We return four hours later for dinner at the industrial-chic restaurant and I realize that at the very least I’ll be able to eat with Alan sitting down for the first time all day.
Shanti returns to our table with a steaming risotto tossed with our foraged wood sorrel, leatherback and Berkeley’s mushrooms. It’s rich and decadent and, most importantly, filling. She also infused the leftover rice water from the risotto with sassafras and burdock root for a drink I can only liken to horchata. “Actually, it’s inspired by the Nigerian rice water I grew up drinking,” Shanti says with a nostalgic smile, “hot milk and spices.”
She follows that with a balancing act of a dish—trout served on top of a generous portion of spoon bread—and a dessert of hummingbird cake or lemon chess pie. As I hem and haw over the cake, Alan gets lost in his thoughts. “It’s 35 pounds and just sitting there,” he says shaking his head, referring to the ottoman-sized mushroom we left behind that afternoon. He then slips into the night.