What are you waiting for? Don’t you realize? It’s the beginning of wild mushroom season, people!

In fact, it’s the end of morel season (at least in the Northern hemisphere), and the very, very beginning of porcini, chanterelles and black trumpets. Granted, you won’t find those in Florida, where I reside and cook, but I know some good people who will get them to you at a reasonable price. And then, oh then, in a rush of adrenaline, you will reach 'shroom heaven — this being no elegy for illegal substances.

I recently ordered wild porcini, otherwise known in some circles as Le King of Shrooms. Elusive, expensive, these chubby, plump, sponge-like fungi suggest noble thoughts of recipes and hyperactive appetite. Certainly in abundance they do.

Porcini grow wild up in the coniferous forests of Europe, from Scandinavia to Greece, along the Mediterranean coast and down in Southern Italy. A cosmopolitan fellow, Le King of Shrooms is spotted all over North America, China, India, New Zealand and Zimbabwe. The northern hemisphere season, roughly from mid-summer to the end of autumn, starting each time in a precise fashion, dictated by a delicate balance of many factors such as moisture, temperature, humidity, variance between daytime and nighttime temperature, soil acidity and other seasonal elements.

This article appears in Jul 22-28, 2010.