My friend Dylan Gordon (@KnowWildFood) is becoming the muse of Canada’s wild mushroom world (or thicket)—a post no one knew was waiting to be filled until he stepped into it.
Listen to this captivating story he tells about being an anthropologist embedded with wild gatherers in the north (a 48 million dollar a year industry), then maybe invite him over for dinner. There is no better dinner companion than a scholar of deliciousness.
[audio:http://individual.utoronto.ca/dgordon/content/mp3/dylangordon-treasure-trove.mp3]
If you like Dylan’s wild recipe poetry—and who wouldn’t (I am so jealous of him getting to say things like White Matsutake, Fiddlehead Greens and Cloudberries in daily conversation)—then you should follow his work on The Toronto Review of Books. He’s posting a series of cookbook reviews this season.
(Dylan wrote this story for SSHRC’s Storytellers competition—the collection of winners itself tells a nice, worthy & accessible story about the marvels of advanced research across Canada.)