Yeah,Joshwa's advice is very good. Anytime I want to eat wild mushrooms, I will go to the restaurant of Kunming Institute of Edible Fungi(滇国菌都). I love the wild mushroom hot pot there. I'd rather pay more money for safety. Other Yunnan dishes are also good there.
Bizarre advice from @AlexKMG: do you regularly eat food that tastes bad just because you paid for it? Where do you draw the line?
While your mushrooms might have been off, taste is no indicator of poisonous mushrooms: not so many people would die of mushrooms if they had a taste indicating 'poison!'. Neither is appearance, the problem being that edible, inedible and poisonous ones can look very much alike.
As for special Yunnan mushrooms, a poisonous variety has even its own wikipedia entry: en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yunnan_sudden_death_syndrome
A case where taste certainly was no indicator and since they work on a time-delay, the link between the mushrooms and deaths was not obvious.
Mushrooms are certainly a big business in Yunnan: today saw lots of women come down from the mountains near Shiping with baskets full of freshly picked mushrooms. But it did not look anywhere as big as the mushroom markets in in the north. Was once inside a very large mushroom processing plant in Shaxi: about 50 people working in what from the outside looked just like an ordinary farmhouse, with a truck parked so in front of the entrance that no-one passing by could look inside. Zhongdian has an interesting mushroom market where the locals sell individual mushrooms to wholesale buyers, with perfect specimens fetching more than 20Y each.
@ludwig
In Kunming I do tend to end up eating oil, greasy, overly spicy, and sometimes bad food. Sure it's cause I paid for it, cause I'm hungry, cause I don't want order and wait again, and cause sometimes I've come to accept some of the swill the locals call food, and they eat it all fine. (mini billdan rant).
I will admit, in the case of the mushrooms, they were off, but not so bad you would spit them out. They were not so rancid or so foul I couldn't swallow them. And I agree my advice will not ferret out all poisonous mushrooms. It's just a personal anecdote I always use for myself now, especially regarding cooked mushrooms, since the projectile vomit I had made a very distinct memory.
Speaking of Shiping, some festival coming up Aug 6 for wild mushrooms
@ludwig
Also, I get food poisoning much more in China than I do anywhere else on the planet. From the conversations, I've had, most foreigners get food poisoned here once or twice a year minimum. Avoiding food that tastes bad seems like a logical choice, but that's always not always the case.
Back to wild mushrooms, just adding to the knowledge base. This was resolved by informing villagers about how deadly that mushroom was. Kinda scary, since the pictures look likes the mushrooms I get at hot pot!
Though it's far from a comprehensive solution, what I've decided to do for the time being is to become a "specialist" in one kind of local wild mushroom. Since first posting last week, I've gone to the market near where I live twice with a good Kunming friend and her mother. The mother is 老昆明 and can talk dialect with the sellers when needed.
We only look at niu gan jun 牛肝菌, which scientifically is Boletus Edulis. In English it is usually called "porcini" or "cepe." It is common here, so pickers and sellers are very familiar with it. Unlike some other wild mushrooms, it does not have any notorious "look-alikes" that are poisonous. It's one that can be identified in the field without having to use special tools or methods.
We check for wormholes in the stem and we check for the gills being intact and not soft or mushy. The latter is a sign of freshness. We try to choose ones that are not too old and "woody." We check for color variations.
There are a couple of common 牛肝菌 variants on sale here, one more yellow in color and one more dark brownish-black. Some vendors don't want you to pick them up, but if you do it carefully by the stem it doesn't bruise the cap and is OK. If they won't let me handle them (with care) then I don't buy there, and just move on.
We also by now have gotten a pretty good idea of what price range is appropriate. Currently, it fluctuates between about 10 and 15 Yuan per liang 两 depending on time of day and bargaining skill. The mushroom sellers use "liang" to mean 50 grams 五十克。It's their spoken abbreviation for 市两 shiliang. It can be confusing because some produce is sold by the 公两, which is 100 grams. They generally don't sell fresh mushrooms retail using larger measure units such as the jin 斤 or gongjin 公斤。
I know how to cook these porcini/niu gan jun by now in simple ways and I think they taste real good. They aren't cheap, but a large dish suitable for two can be made from 20 or 25 Yuan worth of mushrooms, whereas in a restaurant a similar dish might cost 75 or 80.
Still have not gotten out to the Mushroom Institute mentioned above, but hope to next week. As time goes by, I may try to learn a second variety to buy and cook.
remember to cook them well, i mean really well
or you risk being poisoned and see the "little people" as locals would call it.
Anyone has any lead to buy matsutake mushrooms?
Matsutake mushrooms are available at the same places which sell other varieties, namely from small vendors in or near a wet market.
Local name is song jun = 松菌。
