creative force on Earth.

I'm Chef Melissa King.

Cooking has taken me to incredible places.

Wow. (laughs)

From TV competitions and celebrity galas

to countries around the world.

I'm heading out to places I've never been before

to seek out new experiences

and to create new dishes inspired by nature.

Wow. This is amazing.

I'm teaming up with some of the world's greatest explorers

to go further than I've ever gone before.

I love how excited you get about fungal organisms.

- Oh yeah.

- To push my craft, creativity, and my cooking.

This is Tasting Wild.

Rainforests, they cover just 6% of our planet,

but are so important.

(birds chirping)

Not only do they bring balance to our environment

by filtering the air we breathe, but they're home

to some of the world's most unique

and important biodiversity.

Including some species that are staples in my kitchen.

We're here in the Olympic National Forest,

home to one of the only temperate rain forests

in the continental United States,

and I'm here to meet Korena Mafune.

She's a fungal ecologist,

and she studies one of my favorite ingredients, mushrooms.

I'm meeting Korena in what's known as an old growth forest,

this one actually being a rainforest,

and we're goin' on a hike.

Hey Korena. - Hey Melissa.

It's so good to meet you.

- Hi, you too.

- [Korena] Welcome to Olympic National Forest.

- This is gorgeous. - Yeah.

Are you up for a hike? - I would love that.

(birds chirping)

- I'm Korena Mafune,

I'm a fungal ecologist, and I study the interactions

between plants and fungi and the soil systems.

I love being out here in these beautiful old growth forests.

It just gives me this sense of balance

and I'm so lucky to be able to call it my office.

Fungal organisms are so important.

They are everywhere we look.

The ones that we do see are usually mushrooms,

and mushrooms come in all shapes and forms

and they fulfill so many different ecological roles.

They have been here for so long, much longer than us

and they provide a balance in the ecosystem.

I'm so excited to learn about Melissa

and her utilization of mushrooms in the kitchen

and learn about that perspective.

So our plan is to start at Merriman Falls

and work our way down Merriman Creek,

which feeds into Lake Quinault,

and we're hopefully gonna find some really cool things.

But you have to go through some difficulty

to get to these places that are just so beautiful

and will hold all the little secrets

that you see around every corner.

(majestic music)

- Wow. It's so magical.

And the moss is insane.

So what defines an old growth forest?

- So the moss that you see draping off these trees

is one of the defining characteristics

and then it really has to do with the age of the trees,

so 150, 200 plus years old.

- [Melissa] So they're old.

- They're old. Yeah. - They're like ancient.

- Some trees out here are well over 500 years old,

and the ones that I climb are usually

up towards 200 years old.

- So you spend time up in these trees?

- I climb up to the tippy top.

And there's soils on tree branches.

A lot of people come to see these mats of moss

that are hanging off the trees.

- Little magical fairy land.

- But the real treasure is actually

what is under those mossy mats that we call canopy soil.

- What am I holding here?

- Yeah, so canopy soil, it is a soil

and it is so rich in nutrients.

So under those beautiful draping mats of moss

we actually have this organic matter that accumulates

and the trees are growing roots

out of their branches into those mats of moss.

It's an uptake nutrients from those mats.

- Incredible.

There's so much life here that's happening

beyond what we can see.

You really have the coolest job in the whole world.

- You have a pretty cool job. (laughs)

- So where do we start to hunt for mushrooms?

- The waterfall would be a really great place to start

because we can follow it down the river

and I think there'll be some mushrooms

that we can find down there.

(uplifting music)

- Mushrooms tend to anchor a dish.

They carry so much earthiness.

They're very versatile as well.

You can cook 'em fresh, use them dried.

You can turn 'em into powders and infuse 'em into broths,

but they add a boost of flavor to your dishes.

- [Korena] What is really beautiful about the balance

of these ecosystems, it is the circle of life out here.

So the mushrooms are decaying this,

providing habitat to so many organisms.

- [Melissa] It's beautiful.

It's just this sense of rebirth

happening right here in front of us.

- [Korena] Yeah.

(uplifting music)

- [Melissa] I'm that person that gets distracted

when I'm on a hike-

- Always. - I'm always like staring

at things on the ground.

I see some, sorrel here and some licorice fern.

I've made tea with this.

It is a great licoricy flavor.

- Literally, it's called licorice fern. (laughs)

Oh, look what we have here.

- Whoa, what?

- Look at this.

Yeah, so this is a type of bolete,

so the main one that you might be familiar with

is boletus edulis, which is the porcini mushroom.

- [Melissa] Looks a little bit different.

- Yeah, we won't wanna eat this one,

but if we sample this guy

you can see the pores there.

- Like spongy. - Kind of sponge.

Yeah, it's spongy.

There are just billions

of little spores in those little tubes.

- [Melissa] Oh, this is cool. This is gorgeous.

- All right, let's keep going. - All right.

I'm just excited to keep going deeper into the forest.

It's so serene driving through the woods.

Everywhere you look, there's something beautiful to see.

(dramatic music)

You can see the full circle here,

life, but you can also see decay.

Everything here seems to be working

in harmony everywhere I look.

Yeah, this forest that we're driving through is so beautiful

and I love the sense of balance you get

as a person when you're standing in it all.

You could feel the trees like breathing.

You could feel the whole ecosystem-

- Yeah. - Just coming alive.

- [Korena] I'm excited to see what you cook.

- [Melissa] It's a good partnership.

You find the mushrooms, I'll cook 'em.

- Let's get out there and ride - Let's do it.

You lead the way.

- So this is a great place to take a look around

because we're not too far off from the stream.

Let's get over on the other side.

Yes. - Oh my god, they're so cute.

- These are oyster mushrooms.

Do you make any additional odd dishes with oyster mushrooms?

- I cook a lot with every kind of mushroom.

- Every kind of mushroom? - I don't discriminate.

- Neither do. - I love 'em all.

- I'm an equal mushroom opportunist,

so that's great. - I love that.

- When you see mushrooms,

they're just kind of like the fruit of the fungus,

like an apple to an apple tree.

So the actual fungal organism is all throughout this log,

breaking it down and decomposing it

and recycling those nutrients into the forest.

- Amazing.

I love mushrooms, but I know that there's moments

where they're not safe to eat.

- I always tell people, "If in doubt, throw it out."

And we kind of always nerd out and say,

"You can eat all mushrooms, but some you'll only eat once,"

because there are

poisonous mushrooms. (Melissa hums)

These ones are definitely safe to eat.

They are a little young,

but there's some clusters up here that look pretty good.

- How do we go in?

- I would kind of just saw it right there.

- Right underneath?

I like feel bad taking too many.

- [Korena] I always leave a few behind

because leaving some behind

allows those spores to continue to drop,

and so you're not taking all the reproductive structures

and you're allowing them to return that to the ecosystem.

- Just capturing them in that peak moment,

to me as a chef, is so special,

and really maintain the integrity of that ingredient.

I think is what I enjoy doing most.

I'd love to see what else we can find.

- [Korena] All right. Let's keep going down along the river.

- Yeah, let's go check it out.

As a chef, we see mushrooms come in the kitchen

all the time, but to see them growing here

in its natural habitat, there's something special

about being able to harvest your food right on a log.

This whole terrain is making me very happy

and being able to see this.

- Yeah, this is another oyster mushroom

likely the same species that we saw earlier,

but this has had time to mature.

As you can see, if we lift it up,

we see those gills that are holding those fungal spores.

- Flavor gets in there when you cook 'em.

(Melissa giggles) - Yeah.

- Aw, smells so good. It's making me hungry.

Can we harvest this one?

- Yeah. It's ready to go.

(uplifting music)

- It's beautiful. It's magic.

Nature's always the place where I find

the most inspiration in my cooking.

Finding mushrooms like this

and being able to really tell their story through my dish.

Thinking of maybe making some sort of mushroom broth

or a kanji with this to kind of bring in some of my roots.

I mean, you did mention roots and the root system,

so I'm thinking bringing it back to to home and my heritage.

I can't wait to cook for you.

Let's go.

Cooking mushrooms for someone that studies mushrooms,

I wanna get them right.

All of the things that we've gathered together

in the past couple days

I wanna incorporate those ingredients

and build the layers to this dish.

Kanji is the chicken noodle soup of Asian culture.

It reminds me of my family, and I want Korena

to understand who I am as she tastes my food.

(uplifting music)

Yesterday, was incredible, and just thank you so much

for teaching me about all the fungi.

The way you talk about forests is the way I talk about food.

(Korena and Melissa laughing)

- [Korena] Yeah, I'm so curious

to see what you come up with.

- I'm so excited to take you to this really great spot

I found right in the forest and create a dish

that really shows what this place is all about.