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Symbiotic Endeavors
If the thought of mushroom pizza conjures unappetizing visions of a subpar pie speckled with slimy, earthy brown slices, you are not alone. But maybe it’s time to alter your preconceived mushroom notions.
A limited-time special at Pizzeria Venturi in Goshen, Indiana, featured pancetta with fontina cheese, garlic and rosemary topped with fresh oyster mushrooms locally grown by M Mushrooms. With a milder flavor and a more delicate texture than cremini mushrooms, the oyster mushroom’s debut in the wood-fired oven was a welcome indulgence for mushroom enthusiasts everywhere.
Though their pizzeria presence was short-lived, M Mushrooms’ owner Maria Renee Martinez-Sywulka says the interest from the local culinary community is mushrooming.
While in Guatemala earning her undergraduate degree in biology, Martinez-Sywulka fell in love with mycology, and later pursued a master’s degree in food technology. With over 15 years’ experience working with culinary mushrooms, she admits the cultivation process can be time-consuming and sometimes unpredictable.
"It’s like having kids,” jokes the mother of three, emphasizing the fluctuation of mushroom harvest times, their sensitivity to humidity, temperature and carbon dioxide, as well as the ever-present potential for contamination.
During the summer of 2022 Martinez-Sywulka started cultivating mushrooms for herself, but soon established M Mushrooms and began selling them at the Goshen Farmers Market.
Operating out of a small home laboratory, she has since shifted to a mostly restaurant-based clientele for the reliability and predictability desired when working with perishables. Currently, she averages around 25 pounds of mushrooms per week, compared to the 150 to 200 pounds she averaged weekly while working for a mushroom cultivation company in Guatemala in the early 2000s. She credits her initial cultivation knowledge to an immersive seminar hosted by renowned mycologist and fungi expert Paul Stamets shortly after graduating with her biology degree.
Martinez-Sywulka cultivates pink, golden and blue oyster mushrooms, each with subtle differences in texture and flavor but equally rich in nutrients and antioxidants. She also cultivates lion’s mane and shiitake mushrooms, but their varying environmental needs are challenging to properly balance in a limited space.
Martinez-Sywulka’s passion for fungi also extends to teaching; with the help of her eldest daughter, a sixth-grader at Bethany Christian Schools, she taught students the process of mushroom cultivation last fall.
First, demonstrating how she creates the mushroom bags or blocks, Martinez-Sywulka explains that with proper care these blocks can produce several flushes of mushrooms—or rather, the fruiting bodies. Packed tightly with sterilized straw, the blocks are inoculated with spawn, which she describes as a grain that has been colonized by the mushroom mycelium, or the threadlike body of the fungus. This white mycelium then expands throughout the straw and eventually forms pins that grow into clusters for harvest. The project enthralled the students, and after successful cultivation and harvest, they were able to delight in the fruits of their labor cooked fresh by the cafeteria staff. Martinez-Sywulka plans to return with more mushroom blocks for the following sixth-grade class.
Local restaurants that feature Martinez-Sywulka’s mushrooms include Goshen Brewing Company, the Moringa Tree and Artisan. She also supplies the Maple City Market with several individual boxes per week. She expresses deep gratitude for area restaurants that elect to purchase local ingredients, as she acknowledges the higher cost of such goods. But according to Martinez-Sywulka, those able to foot the additional cost are vital to support and maintaining a healthy local community.
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