Be the mushroom.
That’s what Alan Kaufman tells himself as he preps a new strain of fungus in his basement lab. What does the fungus need in order to fruit? How much light does it seek? How much rain? How warm?
Fungi are incredibly adaptable and can grow almost anywhere, from the cool, dark chestnut and oak forests of Périgord, France, to the sand dunes that stretch from Damascus to Baghdad, to the Arctic tundra — and, according to writer Eugenia Bone in her 2011 book “Mycophilia: Revelations from the Weird World of Mushrooms,” on your cotton shirt, in the cooling water systems of nuclear reactors, in the sinuses of small children, on dead animals and on manure.
Let’s banish those last thoughts. Kaufman wants us to eat his mushrooms, and his growing medium is merely sawdust supplemented with rice bran for a dose of nitrogen. A former finance guy turned full-time exotic mushroom farmer, Kaufman produces as much as 500 pounds of mushrooms a week, supplying unusual varieties to highly regarded chefs in New York and New Jersey from his Shibumi Farm.
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