Shiitake
Lentinula edodes
The oak-log mushroom with a cracked brown cap and smoky scent, cultivated in Japan for a thousand years and here for a few decades.
Portrait
Shii is the Japanese name for a kind of oak; take means mushroom. Shiitake is, quite literally, the oak mushroom. Its brown, domed cap, often cracked into white scales when the air is dry (the Japanese call these prized specimens donko), sits on a fibrous stem above cream-coloured gills. The flesh is firm, and its smell, even raw, is already smoky and deep.
A thousand years of cultivation
The Chinese were growing it under the Song dynasty, notching logs and waiting for wild spores to settle in. The Japanese perfected the method: oak logs inoculated, stacked in forest shade, watered and soaked to trigger flushes. That log technique has been adopted by several Québec producers on local maples and oaks. A log-grown shiitake is denser, more fragrant and slower than a sawdust one.
In the kitchen
This is the umami mushroom. Dried, its aroma concentrates, and its soaking water makes an extraordinary base stock, the backbone of vegetarian dashi. Étienne likes to roast them whole in the oven, cap down, with a pinch of salt.
In the workshop
The shop carries it dried whole, sliced and powdered, the latter for seasoning soups, sauces and mushroom blends.
Our products are artisanal plant-based preparations. They are not intended to diagnose, treat, cure or prevent any disease.