It’s 2022 and last year’s top food trend—mushrooms—is showing no signs of stopping. Interestingly, what was once termed, dirty, unpalatable, and Kukurmutta (on which the dog pees) even, the foraged food has come a long way. Food forecasters predict that fungi will be the ingredient of the year, thanks to myriad health benefits, umami flavours, and their ability to slip into recipes without taking away from the main flavours. But, hang on, did mushrooms ever go out of fashion?

Hussain Shahzad, executive chef at The Bombay Canteen and O Pedro, feels the reason fungi is trending is because many farms are growing interesting varieties of it in controlled temperatures with new-age farming techniques.  Which means chefs don’t necessarily have to travel further than the produce aisle to explore them all. Take the gucchi and girda at The Bombay Canteen, for instance. While gucchi is a Kashmiri variant of spongy wild mushrooms with a pleated honeycomb-like texture, girda is a fermented bread. The mushroom dish at the Lower Parel outpost is made with haak saag (Kashmiri collard greens), kohlrabi (German turnip), and radish greens, which are cooked to a creamy puree.  The girda can be paired with shimeji yakhni, made with locally sourced shimeji mushrooms. Grown near Pavana dam, these have a crunchy texture and nutty, savoury flavour. The Kodava mushroom dish, on the other hand, has assorted mushrooms—shimeji, pink oyster or blue and grey oyster and button mushrooms, along with dark toasted spices, and kachampuli, a dark vinegar made from the ripe fruits of the Garcinia gummi-gutta tree found in Coorg.