The good news is that the Collybias nuda and sordida can be found here where I live...

As of yet, the mushrooms that I I've written about are ones that grow in the place where I used to live until a week or so ago. Now I’m living in another country which is neither very far nor very close to my former home. There is a lot of overlap among the varieties of fungal species to be found. And while some of the mushrooms that I used to harvest may not be present here, there are a few species that I’ve never seen before and I’m super excited to get to know them.

Collybia Nuda

The good news is that the Collybias nuda and sordida can be found here where I live now. You might know them as Blewits if you live down north. These fotos I made back in the last locale but I can’t wait to find some here and cook them up to share with my friends.

Unfortunately these in the fotos do not exemplify the vivid coloring often seen. The opportunity to make their portraits came after several sequential days of rain, which washed the pigmentation out. When I get to meet some here, I will make more fotos to share with you. They are so beautiful.

Collybia Sordida

One quality that makes them great for cooking is their texture. When harvested properly, (for instance, I did not harvest these rain-logged mushrooms) they have a firmness that is difficult to destroy by cooking. You would have to try to cook them into a gross, slimy texture. This is not often the case with mushrooms and makes them a good species for beginners to experiment with in recipes. Additionally, they are fairly easy to distinguish form what could be a toxic ‘look-alike’ because said look-alike Cortinarius, have distinctly rust-colored spores. As luck would have it, these poisonous look-alikes are not found here.

Here are some tips for cooking most types of mushrooms:
1. Let them first rest for 15-120 minutes gillside up, in midday sunlight to stimulate their innate ergosterol content to transform them into a rich source of dietary vitamin D.
(You should also do this with any mushrooms, before or during dehydrating them for storage as a wintertime supplement particularly if you live in a climate with little sunlight in winter.)
2. Thick slices or chunks, well-heated pan (preferably above 330° before mushrooms hit that surface) and shorter cooking times will usually be optimal.
3. maybe it seems counterintuitive to you, but don’t stir them around… like at all. Instead allow them to reach a nice golden brown hue on both surfaces, only flipping them from one side to the other to prevent burning. With practice you may be able to sear one side, flip at the perfect moment and finish the other side having only flipped them once per side.
4. Whatever cooking method, mushrooms should probably be one of the last ingredients to enter the pot. This is especially true of high moisture content recipes, such as sauces, which could otherwise leave you with oozey mush of mushroom.
5. For that reason, from sauces to soups to risottos, I prefer to cook mushrooms by a dry method or sear them and add them into the liquidier parts of my recipe, rather than cooking them within the soup or sauce. But not always.

Generally mushrooms contain about 92% water. The other 8% is carbohydrate, protein and minerals and vitamins, being high in B vitamins. This carbohydrate and amino acid content is the perfect blend to generate some beautiful Maillard reactions when they are cooked properly. But to get it right, that water needs to evaporate off quickly enough that it doesn’t drag down the temperature of your cooking surface, hence the 330°. I wrote a bit about Maillared reactions in cooking in another piece, which I will link here.
https://peakd.com/foodporn/@melibee/rosa-and-floras-arroz-con-pollo-and-maillard-reactions
If you enjoy cooking delicious food, I recommend you learn to play with Maillard reactions.

In the past I’ve enjoyed collybias sauteed with onions, garlic and fresh herbs in olive oil or in butter, with chicken and without any other protein source. They go well with a splash white wine towards the finish of the cooking process. They also are fantastic in a polenta dish or a risotto.

A good source of basic nutrition, Blewits also have great medicinal value and are the subjects of ongoing research for their potential usefulness, for example, preventing and mitigating Alzheimer’s Disease and Dementia. Among mushrooms Collybia nuda is found to have some of greatest content of AChE Inhibitors (Acetylcholinesterase Inhibitors) and antioxidants.

Acetycholine ACh is a neurotransmitter that stimulates necessary involuntary muscle movements such as salivation and pupil dilation. It is also involved in focus, memory, learning states, arousal and motivation when released in the brain. The correlating enzyme AChE, not only ends those signals appropriately but breaks down the acetylcholine, making it’s constituent components available to be recycled back into Acetylcholine.

As we age, increased AChE activity can lead to depletion of acetylcholine. Insufficient ACh is a factor in Dementia, Alzheimer’s Disease, Myasthenia Gravis and other diseases. There are pharmaceuticals that inhibit AChE, which generally have unpleasant side effects that are much less common in mushrooms if not altogether absent. This makes their potential as medicine extra-alluring.

Fungi evolve and mutate rather quickly and distinctly in response to distinct climates and ecosystems. Their taxonomy and naming are thusly complicated.

Written by Bee alone. Fotos also are my own
My contribution to #FungiFriday by @ewkaw