Every year in April, Eric Whitehead straps on a pair of boots, loads his truck and prowls through the remote Canadian forest to pick, dry and ship mushrooms back home.
Whitehead and his wife Michelle, with their St. Albert-based company Untamed Feast, are hoping to return a well-kept secret to the sensitive, Canadian palate: the taste of wild fungi.
The couple’s dedication has earned them a shot on CBC’s Dragons' Den. The show will air this Wednesday at 8 p.m.
“The ancestors of Polish, Ukrainian, German or Japanese immigrants, they all have mushrooms in their memories of what their grandmothers used to make,” says Michelle during a recent interview at a local coffee shop.
“The average Canadian consumer doesn’t know about wild mushrooms, they even may be scared of them and they certainly don’t know how to cook them.”
Michelle, who now works from home and looks after their young daughter while Eric gathers fresh produce, says it all started at a yoga course in Thailand. Eric, a forestry worker, and Michelle, a yoga instructor, met, fell in love and discovered a common passion for the outdoors and wild food.
Eric, she says, grew up in a remote forest region in the interior of British Columbia, where he spent much of his youth picking pine mushrooms. At the time, the popular Japanese delicacy exported at more than $100 a pound.
While he later started a career in forestry, Michelle says Eric still picked mushrooms on the side and the couple often went on excursions together.
Her own, early experience with mushrooms is a little more delicate, she admits. Her father was of Polish origin and wild fungi were a popular addition to their meals, she says. So she and her four siblings were often dragged out to search and pick them.
“I hated every moment of it,” she laughs, admitting that she now happily joins Eric on his quests.
In early 2012, the couple quit their day jobs and headed into wilder territory, starting Untamed Feast on Vancouver Island before moving to St. Albert in May of this year.
The company buys the mushrooms from a group of about 14 people that hunt for wild fungi anywhere from the Northern Territories, to Vancouver Island and into Manitoba. Michelle says the season can last anywhere from April to November but the pickers rarely work together.
Mushrooms are hard to find, and pickers are highly secretive about a good location, she says. But the work also requires a lot of concentration and looking at the ground. You can easily get lost, run into bears or wolves, and constantly fight with insects and Mother Nature, she says.
“A lot of people compare it to the gold rush because you work really hard and if you are lucky you get something good,” she says. “And sometimes you go out there for weeks and find nothing and melt in despair.”
Untamed Feast’s mushrooms are harvested and dried on the same day, using a wood stove that Eric built and installed in the back of his truck. By the time they reach St. Albert, the mushrooms are ready to be packaged for sale and can keep for over a year.
“A lot of times you see dried mushroom that has been flashed or frozen dried, they just torch it or it’s semi-cooked, or really instantly dehydrated,” she says.
“But you can imagine if you roast coffee beans or caramelize onions that it’s that slow, steady heat that makes a finer product and that’s how we do things today.”
Going before the Dragons, Michelle says the couple asked for help to grow Untamed Feast (they now sell in 120 stores across Western Canada, locally at D'Arcy's Meat Market and the Enjoy Centre), and to receive mentorship on how to run their business more efficiently.
Aside from their specialty – dried morels, a mushroom that looks like a mix of brain and honeycomb – Untamed Feast sells a blend of forest mushrooms, wild porcini, and smoked and cask-aged chanterelles at $14 to $18 per 20 grams.
They also created a number of ready-made dishes, such as porcini risotto, wild mushroom soup, morel coconut rice and a Spanish dish – chanterelle arroz – that only needs a touch of wine or coconut milk to be ready.
Michelle half-jokingly admits it took them a long time, and eating many mushrooms, to create the dishes.
“A lot of people will say I don’t like mushrooms which is the same as to say I don’t like vegetables where you might like broccoli but might hate potatoes,” she says.
“Whereas the mushrooms, they have as much if not more difference in texture, flavour, aroma and what you would do with them.”
Untamed Feast’s debut on the Dragons’ Den will air Wednesday, Nov. 6 at 8 p.m. on CBC. More information about the company can be found at untamedfeast.com.
