Bloom time for cordyceps flower

The mushroom is showing up on restaurant menus in a variety of dishes

- Tan Hsueh Yun

They look like lily buds or thin, handmade noodles, have a springy texture, a mild, earthy flavour and an orange hue.

It is bloom time for cordyceps flower. The ingredient is showing up on restaurant menus – as snacks in fine-dining restaurants, in soups in Chinese restaurants, and in pasta and other dishes.

The irony is that this ingredient is not a flower. It is a kind of mushroom, says Mr Ng Sze Kiat, 44, founder of Bewilder, a mushroom farm in Bukit Merah. He grows cordyceps flower.

"It is not easy to grow, and high-quality specimens are even more tricky," he says. "Breeding our own strains in our fungal lab plays a part in producing these potent mushrooms."

Cordyceps flower is quite distinct from that traditional Chinese medicine powerhouse, cordyceps.

Cordyceps spores invade and feed off the bat moth caterpillar at high altitudes in Tibet and other parts of China, eventually killing it and bursting out of its head. That is when they are harvested, and used to boost stamina and strengthen the immune system, among other benefits, in soup, tea or in capsule form.

Wild cordyceps are scarce, hand-harvested and expensive. A bottle of 30 Wild Cordyceps capsules at Eu Yan Sang is priced at $302.

Cordyceps flower has some of the same properties, but is not as pricey. FairPrice supermarkets carry it fresh from Kin Yan Agrotech ($3 for a 120g pack); and dried, in a box with dried shiitake mushrooms from Sun Kee ($18.80 for a 200g box).

Many of the chefs who use the ingredient say they first had it in China.

Chef Chen Kentaro, 45, of one-Michelin-starred Shisen Hanten by Chen Kentaro at Hilton Singapore Orchard, says: "I first encountered cordyceps flower in several cities across China, particularly in Chengdu and Sichuan, where it is widely used in various dishes due to its medicinal properties."