FIDELMA COOK

EVEN now, when really I should know better, I sometimes offend French sensibilities by asking the wrong question. Having been out to lunch miles away I returned home to find a garden chair wedged against the glass doors.

Under the tinfoil and on a plate large enough to be a family serving dish was a monstrous pizza; yet another gift of food from my neighbour Miriam. Proud of her Italian ancestry and with the baffling French love of the doughy offering, she regularly makes pizza and includes me in the equation.

I cannot now tell her I hate pizza. So because of her kindness I glumly pick out a chunk of the middle bit and chew my way through it.

(When you’ve been brought up to accept whatever you’re given with a radiant smile and fulsome praise and thanks, you spend your life eating vast quantities of things you hate that people think you love.)

Anyway, after I phoned and, of course, went overboard on the fulsome praise and thanks, she said she’d come by the following day.

So I did my best with a further chunk of pizza that day then carefully wrapped the remains and shoved them down to the bottom of the bin.

My guilt over throwing out good food prepared with love is so great I fear Miriam will walk into the kitchen to upend my bin.

That morning I’d had a brief chat with Pierrot. He’d driven by on his way to the boar hunt and spotted Cesar running in my parc.

As I came to with my first coffee of the day I looked up to see him pushing the reluctant dog into his compound in the belief he’d escaped. How could I tell him that C was now given a brief free runaround before breakfast and hadn’t escaped? So with much fulsome praise and thanks I left him feeling the hero of the hour.

A few hours later Miriam phoned, quite breathless with excitement. She now wouldn’t be able to come today because Pierrot was now out on “la chasse aux champignons” and they were magnificent and she had to join him in the plucking. Of course, as the leaves turn, if the weather conditions have been right – as they have – then the mushrooms shyly poke through in the depths of the woods.

“Oh great,” I said. “Where’d he find them?” I heard the quick intake of breath and then … the silence. At the same time I realised I had made a big – really big – faux pas.

One never asks a neighbour where their mushrooms’ stomping ground is, one never acknowledges a furtive figure sneaking into undergrowth with knife and basket and one never, ever investigates a little white van nosed in under a copse of trees.

“Silly question. I didn’t mean it. I honestly don’t want to know. I mean, I’m not going out there, am I?”

We both laughed and Miriam quickly moved on to make further arrangements.

Mushroom foraging is no pleasant excuse for a stroll in La France Profonde. Several years ago mushroom wars broke out around me when townies hid to watch for locals then ripped up the “beds”. Police ended up patrolling and warned off several farmers who chased off the intruders with a few wellplaced shots.

It wasn’t just the desecration of hidden spots passed on for generations in each family, it was the careless destruction.

According to the French forest code, if you are caught picking more than 5kg of mushrooms on public forest property, you could face jail and/or a massive fine. The same is true if caught on private land without permission. One frequently sees signs warning that picking is forbidden.

Locals go to extreme lengths to guard their patch – creeping out by torchlight, hiding their vans a kilometre away and skirting the road before quickly disappearing.

After years of foraging, starting as children, they can easily identify which mushrooms are safe to eat from the 3000-plus varieties found in this country. And if in doubt, pharmacists are trained to pick out the killers and think nothing of being offered a basket full to sort through.

Genevieve, from a neighbouring village, is widely accepted as the finest of all gatherers in a large neighbourhood. A fine site whispered down her family produces the exquisite trompettes de la morte, the rich yet delicate fungi which for me is the finest of all and sells for a fortune both here and abroad.

She once served me a soup of these, the cooked whole tops scattered throughout the woody depths of the thick liquid. For once my fulsome praise and gratitude was genuine.

Of course both the roadside vegetable stalls and even the supermarkets are now selling ceps, their thick stems and heads still doused in the black earth of their birth. Unless you have good foraging neighbours, it is the safest way to enjoying the autumn bounty.

Now I’m waiting for Miriam to arrive and greedily wondering if she’ll bring maybe some girolles, another favourite, with her.

I won’t ask where she got them but will show how much they’re appreciated with fulsome praise and thanks. But first I must check the bin to make sure nothing is showing.