Psychoactive, medicinal, or simply delicious, mushrooms have fascinated us for millennia, facilitating spiritual quests ancient and modern, and inspiring artists from Bosch to Kusama. Delve into the third, exquisite platter from The Gourmand for TASCHEN: an in-depth mycological journey, bursting with original stories and recipes.

A feast of stories and recipes exploring fungi as myth, medicine, and muse.

The Gourmand’s Fungi: A Collection of Stories & Recipes is a feast of content on the planet’s most mysterious, influential, and subtly radical ingredient. Revered as food, medicine, sacrament, and symbol, fungi appear and disappear suddenly, leaving an unmistakable cultural and culinary imprint.

This nuanced collection brings together The Gourmand’s characteristic fusion of culinary art and cultural investigation. Accompanied by photography that celebrates mycological marvels as sculpture, pattern, and form, readers will enjoy essays ranging from ancient folklore and toxicology to avant-garde art, architecture, fashion, cinema, and space travel. Discover Bosch and Beatrix Potter, María Sabina and the CIA, Yayoi Kusama and Takashi Murakami. Delight in cartoon fungi, fairy rings, death caps, fly agaric, and the enduring allure of the enchanted lingzhi. Discover fungi’s singular power to inspire devotion, dread, obsession, and delight.

Alongside the texts, you’ll find an extensive collection of original recipes celebrating fungi in all their earthy, umami-rich glory. From delicate Cantonese stuffed mushrooms and crispy tempura to pierogi, risotto, ramen toppings, wild mushroom ravioli, classic duxelles, and traditional mushroom ketchup.

The book opens with a lyrical reflection on impermanence, foraging, and culinary memory by acclaimed chef and food writer Jeremy Lee. At once a visual feast, a fanzine, and a field guide, it is a homage to fungi as ephemeral wonders, cultural icons, and ingredients of infinite creativity.

Hardcover, 20 x 27.9 cm, 1.227 kg, 292 pages