Hillbilly Haute Cuisine

FOR CENTURIES, MY APPALACHIAN ancestors have gone to the woods to hunt for deer, pick wild asparagus and blackberries, and fish for trout in streams. But of all the hillbilly delicacies to be found gratis in the great Virginia outdoors, the most precious is also the least lovely. I'm talking about those little moist gnome brains that peek up through the rotting leaves every spring, the ones the city slickers call morchellas, or morels.