Experience: I nearly died after eating wild mushrooms

A few weeks ago I interviewed a lovely man from New York called Richard Eshelman for the Guardian Weekend magazine. The Guardian's online article can be seen here.

Richard talked openly to me about his experience of eating some of the most deadly wild mushrooms on the planet: a handful of destroying angels.

Luckily, Richard survived, but came very close to death. He is still a keen wild mushroom forager. He admits that the mistake he made was to not identify the wild mushrooms he had picked properly before he ate them. Here is his experience:

Richard Eshelman: I ate deadly wild mushrooms

"Four years ago, a few days before my 56th birthday, I went to one of my favourite spots – a park about a quarter of a mile from my home in Ithaca, New York.

"That summer had been hot and humid, and there were mushrooms everywhere. I saw some on the ground I thought were edible ink caps – white, with their caps down. I also spotted a bigger mushroom nearby with its cap open – it looked poisonous to me. I should have remembered that mushrooms grow in colonies: it was likely that the lone bigger mushroom and the smaller versions were the same. But I didn't think. It was a glorious day and I felt invincible. I picked three or four of the small ones and took them home.

"As a young man, I used to look for morels and meadow mushrooms. At college, I'd taken a course in mushroom hunting. I didn't consider myself an expert, but I did know that there was a very toxic mushroom called the destroying angel, one of the most deadly mushrooms in the world.

"At home, I spent some time looking for my mushroom book to identify what I'd picked, but couldn't find it. I was in a rush because I was going out, so I thought, "It's OK, I know what I'm doing. These are definitely ink caps." I fried them with butter and ate them as a side dish. Ink caps usually give out a residue when you cook them. These didn't, which should have been my first clue that they weren't what I thought they were. They didn't taste great – in fact, there was something quite bland about them. "I won't bother eating these again," I thought.

"That night, I told friends I'd just eaten wild mushrooms. One asked if they'd had white caps and gills, and I said, yes. She told me her mother said never eat mushrooms that are white all over. I shrugged it off and said I knew what I was doing. But she planted the first seed of doubt.

"The next morning, I woke up about 4am, ran to the bathroom and started throwing up. Then the diarrhoea began. I thought, perhaps my friend was right; maybe I've eaten poisonous mushrooms.

"I went again to look for my mushroom book, which I now found. I looked up the destroying angel – and there were my exact symptoms: eight hours after eating, it will cause vomiting and diarrhoea. And then it destroys your liver – there's no antidote and 60-80% of people don't survive. I realised I'd made the biggest mistake of my life.

"The scary thing about the destroying angel is that it tricks you into thinking you are making a recovery. After the vomiting and diarrhoea, you start to feel better. Knowing this, I acted quickly and called the hospital. They recommended going back to where I picked the mushrooms to see if I could find another so they could identify it – which is what I did. Then I drove myself to the emergency room. As I left my house, I thought, "Look around, you may never be back here."

"At that point, I hadn't told anyone else that I suspected I'd poisoned myself. I called work, because I had a shift that night. Eventually, I called my girlfriend. I felt embarrassed that all my friends and family would know I'd made such a terrible mistake.

"The doctors ran some tests and confirmed I'd eaten the destroying angel. I was the third person that year to be admitted after eating one. The two before me hadn't survived. I was sent to another hospital a few hours away; it was the best place to be if my liver failed and I needed a transplant.

"I was still vomiting and the diarrhoea was constant. I had tubes down my throat, and the doctors took blood samples every hour to monitor my liver. They asked me questions to check I was lucid. The critical night was on Friday, three days after I'd eaten the mushrooms, when I went into intensive care. I was given high doses of penicillin and the next morning my liver began to recover. I didn't need a transplant, but my kidneys were badly damaged. I was kept in for another week. All I know is that I survived – one doctor said it was a miracle.

"I haven't had the courage to pick wild mushrooms since – I don't trust myself – but my experience shouldn't deter others. The mistake I made was assuming I knew what I was eating. I wasn't paying attention and I'm lucky to be alive."

Mushroom girl

I just had to post a picture of this amazing mushroom-themed card that my good friend Amy drew for me for my birthday at the end of October. Think she was inspired by our birthday foraging adventure (and the fact that whenever she comes round to our flat, there's always some form of mangled mushroom half decayed somewhere in the kitchen, aka 'being identified').

Wellies on, mushroom book in hand, basket brimming, with what I hope are boletes, I'm trying to find the mushroom that will make me younger... (cheeky lady)!

It's so lovely, I think I might have to change my profile photo...

Marco Pierre White’s favourite wild mushroom recipe

During my interview with Marco Pierre White, he told me about his favourite wild mushroom recipe, using freshly foraged mousserons (also called fairy ring mushrooms).

Mousserons look like this:

Mousseron mushrooms (or fairy ring)

It's a great late lunch/brunch dish: basically posh eggs on toast with wild mushrooms. It sounds delicious, but not very healthy — poached oeufs in butter, anyone? (me, me, me!)

“My favourite wild mushroom recipe uses mousseron mushrooms,” says Marco Pierre White, “which I think are also called fairy ring champignon.”

After you’ve found a basketful of the lovely mushrooms (and properly identified them), Marco says: “Clean them off and remove their tough stalks.

“Drizzle a little olive oil over them and put them on a tray and pop them under the grill. Never put these mushrooms in a pan, as you will flatten them,” he advises. “Grill them gently.”

In a new pan, melt a large amount of butter, “I'm talking half a pack,” he says seriously.

“Then crack six eggs, or however many, into the melted butter and gently poach the eggs in the butter.”

Don't let the butter bubble though, “that is very important,” he says.

When the eggs are ready, season them with salt and pepper and transfer onto some (unbuttered) toast.

“You can drizzle some of the butter from the pan if you want to. And sprinkle the grilled wild mushrooms on top of the eggs. Serve it with some fresh salad leaves.

Well, my taste buds are tingling! “I'm not saying this recipe is good for the heart,” Marco says, “but it is pleasing for the heart.”

I'm looking forward to finding a big haul of mousserons so I can try this recipe out for myself.

Would you mess with Marco and Simon?

Marco Pierre White is wild about mushrooms

Earlier this month I interviewed the infamously hot-tempered celebrity chef Marco Pierre White at the Box Tree restaurant in Ilkley. The Box Tree is the place that Marco calls his "spiritual home". It's where he started his career as a young man — leading him to become the youngest chef ever to earn three Michelin stars.

Me with Marco outside the Box Tree

It's a lovely place. The interview was going well, until I interrupted the flow of Marco's monologue – and he wasn’t happy. In fact, he glowered at me.

The bit of croissant I was attempting to eat stuck firmly in my throat as he sternly said: “If you’d be polite enough to let me finish my sentence...” he stared at me pointedly.

Yikes. For the rest of the interview I sat as politely as possible, nodding and smiling and let him say everything he had planned to say. Finally he looked at me, waiting. I could ask a question. 

And what did I ask? The only thing I really wanted to know: "You may be a world-renowned chef, perfectly capable of cooking up the most wonderful meal. But could you survive in the wild, fending for yourself, eating wild foods?"

After his brief pause, he responded that yes, of course he could fend for himself. He'd been hunting and fishing for years, and was a competent forager of wild food.

“I've always had a fascination with forgaing. I go collecting mirabelle plums every year with my daughter, Mirabelle. We make tarts, or mirabelles and custard. It's also good now to go and pick elderberries, which are delicious with wild duck or venison.”

"And do you like mushrooms?"

I’d tapped into something, and for the first time in the interview (perhaps ever) he smiled: “Mushrooms are quite magical things,” Marco said slowly. I probed further...

“My fascination with mushrooms started as a child. If you think back to your childhood, mushrooms or toadstools played a magical part – gnomes, fairies, they all seem to hang out around mushrooms in a deep forest; so they capture you're attention at an early age,” he said.

Marco went on to talk for a while longer about his love of wild mushrooms: he said his earliest memory of picking wild mushrooms was being taken by his grandfather: “He used to take me and we would pick lots and lots of mushrooms. Finding something as a child was always exciting. We would collect button or field mushrooms, horse mushrooms. It was always fascinating, something of a ritual and I loved that.”

Marco explained that he was brought up on a council estate on the outskirts of Leeds. But as a young boy he explored the rolling grounds of a nearby stately home. “I was very fortunate that my playground was the grounds of Hareweood House and along the River Wharfe, where I would fish.”

He said: “I used to pick blewits. Mousserons are delicious; really beautiful mushrooms, with an intense flavour. And I picked lots and lots of birch boletes, orange boletes, chanterelles, porcini. There's something quite beautiful about the amount of time you invest to find just a few; although the other day I did find 4kg of mushrooms in just half an hour.”

What's more, Marco hints that his early experiences of foraging contributed to him becoming a chef: “Those experiences as a child influenced me as a chef. But really it was mother nature that inspired me and captured my imagination. It was a natural love affair, of respect and admiration.”

So mushrooms saved the day. Who would have thought, that after such a spectacularly bumpy start to the interview, I would end up charming him with my mushroom chat...

Happy birthday foraging (continued)...

The woods where it all began...

Looking for mushrooms

We found some!

Dead man's fingers (great name!)

The sickener?

Mina talks us through how to pick them

Voila!

Not quite Sex and the City...

Our haul

My brown birch bolete!