Miss A's Handpick Fine Food · From our kitchen notebook
A Singapore cook's guide to eating them well — from a clear chicken soup on a rainy night to a ten-minute pan of morels.
Mushuihua market, Kunming, half past five in the morning. Still dark, concrete wet, and the first thing you smell — before the tea stalls, before the rain on hot tarmac — is mushrooms. Not the polite supermarket kind. Piles of them, straight off the mountain trucks: boletes the size of soup bowls, matsutake wrapped in leaves like small parcels. Stallholders work by torchlight, and nobody haggles for long. In season, the good stuff is gone by seven.
Yunnan waits all year for this. The rains come, the forests fill, and for a short stretch — roughly July to September, trailing into early October — the province eats mushrooms the way we eat durian in June: urgently, and with opinions. Somewhere between 900 and over 1,000 edible species grow there, more than 90 per cent of China's total. Numbers that big stop meaning anything. What stays with you is one bowl of clear soup at a market stall, tasting like the whole forest had been rinsed through it.
Back in Singapore, that bowl is the problem — our humidity is Yunnan weather without Yunnan mushrooms. So we've settled into an arrangement: the fresh ones fly in during the season, and the ones that freeze-dry well are locked in at their peak, so the season can sit in your pantry. What follows is how I choose between them — by the dish, the way you'd choose at the market. One honest note first: the wild-picked stars below are exactly that, wild. A few others are carefully cultivated, and I'll say which. Anyone who tells you every mushroom was foraged from a pine forest is selling you a story, not a mushroom.
"What stays with you is one bowl of clear soup at a market stall, tasting like the whole forest had been rinsed through it."
For soup, start here
A Yunnan mushroom soup is clear, not creamy. The mushrooms perfume the broth rather than thicken it. These are the three I reach for first.
Fresh · Cultivated
Himematsutake 姬松茸
$10.90 / 200gIt smells of almonds when you tear it open, and the sweetness comes late — beginners taste the soup, old hands wait for what lingers after.
Simmer it in a clear chicken soup or drop it into hotpot and let it scent the whole pot. This is the one we re-order for ourselves, every season, without discussing it.
Fresh · Cultivated
Golden Ear 金耳
$9.95 / 200gThe first time I ate this I thought: all texture, no taste. That is precisely the point — it is a golden jelly that drinks up whatever broth you give it.
Slice it into chicken soup for the colour and the bounce, or go the Yunnan way: a sweet soup with rock sugar, where the jelly is the whole event.
Freeze-dried · Wild mix
Wild Assorted Mushroom Soup Pack 云南野生冻干菌汤包
$14.55 / 25gOne pack, one pot. A mixed basket of freeze-dried wild mushrooms that tastes like somebody already did the market run for you.
Soak, then simmer with chicken for the fastest route to that market-stall bowl. Keep one in the pantry for the week you can't face deciding.
"You don't really eat it — you smell it, and the eating is how you keep the smell going."
The one that smells like cinnamon and a pine forest
Everyone has one mushroom they wait for. Mine is matsutake. You don't really eat it — you smell it, and the eating is how you keep the smell going. It only grows with living pine trees, so there is no farm version. In Yunnan a vendor will hold a closed, unopened button to your nose before he'll discuss price. That smell is the price.
Freeze-dried · Wild-picked
Matsutake Freeze-Dried Slices 冻干松茸片
$79.56 / 20gPine sap, cinnamon candy, clean forest floor. Nothing else in a kitchen smells like this.
Tear it — never cut it — over rice and let the steam do the work, or float the slices in a clear soup. Keep the soaking water: it goes into the rice, every drop. Full honesty: freeze-drying is the closest a shelf-stable mushroom gets to the fresh aroma, not a copy of it. It is the season, kept.
Morels are built to hold butter
Look at the cap: a honeycomb, hollow all the way through, every pocket a small cup waiting for sauce. The first time I had morels cooked properly — seared hard, butter only at the end — I understood why cooks in two hemispheres argue about them. Ten minutes, start to finish. That's the whole trick.
Freeze-dried · Wild-picked
Morel XL, Freeze-Dried 羊肚菌
$14.71 small pack · $69.22 largeToasty and deep, less a flavour than a texture that traps whatever you cook it in — butter, cream, pan juices.
Sear in a dry-ish hot pan first so they colour, then butter and shallot at the end. Over pasta, into a risotto, or with creamy chicken. Start with the small pack if you're curious; the large one is for people who already know.
For the wok, and for Sunday risotto
The rest of the range earns its keep on weeknights — hot pan, torn pieces, cooked through. Porcini comes in two forms because we use it two ways: fresh for a Yunnan-style blast in the wok, freeze-dried for Italian cooking, where the soaking liquid is half the point.
Fresh · Wild-picked
Porcini / Black Boletus 黑牛肝菌
$13.99 / 200gSpringy and meaty, cut thick — it bites back a little, the way good boletes do.
The Yunnan way: slices into a smoking wok with chilli and garlic, cooked properly through. It stands up to heat and spice without going quiet.
Freeze-dried · Wild-picked
Wild Porcini, Freeze-Dried 野生牛肝菌
$30.99 / 25gYou get two ingredients in one bag: the mushrooms, and a dark, tea-coloured liquid once they've soaked. Never pour the second one away.
Soak in warm stock, then risotto or penne boscaiola, with the strained soaking liquid ladled in as you go. That's restaurant depth from a pantry bag.
Fresh · Cultivated
Maitake 舞茸菌
$9.99 / 200gAll frills and edges — and edges are where mushrooms crisp. The centre stays meaty; the fringes go lacy and brown.
Tear it into big pieces by hand and roast or pan-fry in a single layer until the edges crackle. Pile it over noodles or a rice bowl and call it dinner.
Fresh · Cultivated
Blue Oyster 蓝平菇
$12.84 / 200gBlue-grey fans with a faint whiff of anise. Eat them young, while they're tender — leave them too long and they turn stubborn.
The friendliest first mushroom in this list. A hot wok, soy and garlic, edges crisping; or battered and fried as a snack with rice.
Dried · Pantry staple
Dried Black Fungus 黑木耳
$10.99 / 100gNo drama, all crunch. Soaked, it comes back springy and cool, the texture every bland dish is missing.
The cheap, good thing every kitchen should already own: cold salads with vinegar and chilli, stir-fries, soups. A handful soaks up to a bowlful.
Two more for the hotpot. Porcelain Queen QQ（QQ菇 · 黑皮鸡枞） — $12.84 — porcelain-white and bouncy as its name promises, and Pig Stomach Mushroom（猪肚菌） — $13.70 — crisp and firm, holding its bite through a long simmer. Both belong in hotpot and slow soups, where texture is the whole game. Find them in the Yunnan collection →
Fresh this week, or freeze-dried for the pantry?
People ask me this at the shop counter, so here it is the way I answer it. Neither is the "real" one. They are for different weeks of your life.
Buy fresh if…
- You're cooking this week — fresh mushrooms are at their best within days, not weeks.
- It's the texture you want most alive: golden ear's jelly, maitake's frills, a bolete's spring.
- You want the season as the season intended: briefly, and right now.
Buy freeze-dried if…
- You want it on a Tuesday in October: five to ten minutes in warm water or stock brings it back, shape and bite close to fresh.
- You cook soups, risottos and sauces — the soaking liquid is a ready-made mushroom stock, a second ingredient in the bag.
- You stock up: sealed and kept cool and dry, it waits in the pantry far longer than fresh ever could.
My honest recommendation: keep a little of both. Fresh for the weekend you plan around; freeze-dried for the weeknight you don't.
Three pots I actually cook
No projects here. If a mushroom dish can't be done after work, it doesn't survive in my kitchen either.
Morels in butter, ten minutes
About 10 minutes · Serves 2 over pasta or toast
- Soak the morels briefly in warm water, lift them out, and halve them lengthwise.
- Sear them hard in a hot pan with a little oil until they colour.
- Butter and a chopped shallot in at the end, a splash of soy and lemon, a spoon of the soaking liquid to bring it together.
Don't start them in butter — it burns before the morels brown. And don't soak them for hours; they need waking up, not drowning.
Matsutake rice
5 minutes of work · The rice cooker does the rest
- Soak the slices in warm water for ten minutes; keep every drop of the liquid.
- Rinse your rice, and use the soaking liquid as part of the cooking water.
- Lay the torn matsutake on top and cook the rice exactly as usual.
Don't bury it — no butter, no cream, no heavy sauces. The aroma is the dish; let it arrive unaccompanied.
Maitake, crisped at the edges
About 15 minutes · A side dish, or the main event over rice
- Tear the cluster by hand into big, feathery pieces.
- One layer only, into a hot, oiled pan or a roasting tray.
- Leave it alone until the edges brown and crisp, then salt at the end.
Don't crowd the pan. Piled up, maitake steams and goes soft — and the crisp edges were the entire reason you started.
Bringing Yunnan home
Good mushrooms are worth waiting for — but the waiting should end at your stove, not at a market stall you can't get to. That's why this range exists at Miss A. The fresh mushrooms are flown in while the season lasts; the freeze-dried ones are locked in at the picking peak, already cleaned, identified and portioned. That last part matters: in Yunnan itself, everyone jokes that you should know your mushrooms, cook them right through, and know the way to the hospital — the famous blue-staining bolete there is loved precisely because people respect the cooking. Bought sorted and labelled, the respect is built in. Just keep the one rule that never changes: mushrooms get cooked through, never half-raw.
If you're building one pot to start with, build the market-stall one: the assorted soup pack or a handful of himematsutake, simmered with a whole SASSO free-range chicken — $26.70 — the bird we built this shop around. And if you're anywhere near East Coast Road, come in and smell a pack of matsutake before you buy it. The vendor in Kunming would insist on exactly that.
Two baskets that clear free delivery
Standard delivery is free on orders over $150, so these are the two combinations I end up recommending at the counter — no padding, nothing in either basket that a mushroom cook wouldn't use up happily.
The freeze-dried pantry
Shelf-stable — the three jars that carry a winter of soups.
- Matsutake Freeze-Dried Slices, 20g 冻干松茸片$79.56
- Morel XL, Freeze-Dried, 500g 羊肚菌$69.22
- Wild Porcini, Freeze-Dried, 25g 野生牛肝菌$30.99
Clears the $150 free-delivery line by $29.77 — nothing extra to add.
Prices as listed on missa.sg.
The soup worth gathering for
One chicken, two legendary mushrooms — the pot does the rest.
- SASSO Whole Chicken (Fresh) 法国SASSO走地鸡$26.70
- Matsutake Freeze-Dried Slices, 20g 冻干松茸片$79.56
- Morel XL, Freeze-Dried, 500g 羊肚菌$69.22
Clears the $150 free-delivery line by $25.48 — nothing extra to add.
Prices as listed on missa.sg.
Ordering, the practical part
- One check before you check out: every card above is labelled fresh or freeze-dried — make sure the form in your basket is the one your recipe wants.
- Free standard delivery on orders over $150.
- Order by 3pm for same-day delivery (orders over $150; $15 same-day fee).
- First order? $5 off orders of $88 or more with the code 88FOR5OFF.
- Prefer to look before you buy? The shop is at 421 East Coast Road — pick up in store, and yes, you can smell the matsutake.
Shopping the whole range at once? Browse all our mushrooms — fresh, freeze-dried and dried, in one collection.
