Food & Drink
Mushroom season is in full swing and careful foragers will be rewarded with fabulous flavours
Neil Forbes cooks with mushrooms, plus Rose Murray Brown chooses the best new wines around
My very first cooking job after leaving school some 32 years ago was in an upmarket Italian restaurant in Surrey called Casa Dei Cesari. It was a great place to learn how to cook simple, authentic Italian food.
The chef was Alfred Wagner, a larger-than-life German. He was twice my size, and his voice would boom orders across the kitchen during service. A pint of real beer was on the pass for him before every service and he ate bone marrow from the stock pot on buttered bread. I admired his approach to cookery. He was quite a guy.
An enduring memory is of the owners coming into the kitchen with baskets of wild mushrooms, ceps in particular. They loved them. Every inch of available space in the kitchen was taken up with drying these beauties on newspaper.
I still adore ceps. This year has been particularly good, and our foragers are bringing lots to our kitchen door at Cafe St Honoré. The flavour of a sautéed cep in butter is something to die for.
Get out and enjoy the wilderness and have a look for some ceps as you go for a walk. But remember not to pick anything wild unless you are certain that it is edible.
Mushroom, beer and brown bread soup
I can’t recall where I got this recipe, but it’s in my top 10 of soups. Earthy mushrooms, yeasty beer and bread combine to provide a wonderful flavour. Use ceps if you can, but otherwise button mushrooms are grand. Or try portobellos or Paris browns.
Serves four 1 large onion, peeled and thinly sliced 2 cloves garlic, peeled and sliced 400g ceps, or button mushrooms, lightly washed, sliced 50g butter 2 tbsp rapeseed oil 100g good brown bread like a sourdough, crusts removed and diced into small cubes ½ bottle of good beer of your choice, something real ale and dark is nice 50ml double cream 500ml chicken stock, or water will do just fine good salt and pepper
Heat the rapeseed oil in a thickbottomed pan. And the onions, season with salt and pepper, and fry on a moderate heat for 20 to 30 minutes until they’re starting to caramelise, stirring occasionally.
Add the garlic, then the mushrooms and then the butter. Cook for a few minutes, stirring occasionally then add the bread, beer and stock, and bring to the boil.
Cook on a simmer for 20 to 30 minutes until the mushrooms are soft. Check the seasoning, then blitz the soup in a food processor and add the cream.
Serve with a piece of Welsh rarebit or crusty sourdough.
Scallops, ceps and black pudding
I put this dish on at Cafe St Honoré when we receive a hoard of ceps. It always sells well and is delicious. Cook the ceps, black pudding and scallops in the same pan as all the flavours marry well, and the fat released from the black pudding adds extra flavour to the ceps and shellfish. Don’t be afraid of the butter sauce, or beurre blanc as we chefs call it. A little splash of cream stabilises the reduction and prevents the sauce from splitting.
Serves one 2 to 3 hand-dived scallops, coral left on 1 slice of Stornoway black pudding a small handful of ceps, lightly washed 1 small shallot, peeled and roughly chopped 2 peppercorns 1 sprig thyme 1 sprig tarragon 100ml white wine 100ml white wine vinegar 1 tbsp double cream 75g unsalted butter, 1cm cubes a few wood sorrel leaves, optional juice from half a lemon 1 tbsp rapeseed oil good salt and pepper
Prepare the ceps by cutting in half and scoring a criss-cross pattern on the cut sides.
Make a butter sauce by adding the wine, vinegar, peppercorns and herbs to a small pan and reducing to a couple of tablespoons. Pass through a fine sieve into a clean pan and add the cream. Whisk together and bring to just below the boil. Then add the butter one cube at a time until emulsified. Season with a pinch of salt and a squeeze of lemon. Keep at a steady temperature until needed.
Meanwhile, heat the oil in large nonstick frying pan on a high heat on the hob. Once hot, add the black pudding, scallops and ceps. Season the scallops and ceps. Cook everything for 2 minutes before turning. Once turned, season the scallops and ceps again with salt and pepper and a squeeze of lemon juice. Ensure the black pudding has a nice crust all over.
To serve, place the black pudding, scallops and ceps on a warmed plate. Spoon over the butter sauce and decorate with the zesty wood sorrel.
Ceps on toast
A favourite quick supper dish. It has to be proper sourdough, good butter, a kick of tarragon and a splash of cream. I give all the mushrooms a little wash in cold running water and I don’t find they soak up water and become soggy. Some say to use a brush, but I have tried for years and cannot remove all the bits of the forest floor. Toast your bread in a toaster if you like but I love the extra flavour of
pan-fried bread in butter or bacon fat.
Serves one 1 slice of good sourdough 100g ceps, lightly washed and sliced 1 shallot, peeled and finely chopped 1 clove garlic, peeled and finely chopped a few fronds of tarragon, chopped 1 tbsp curly parsley, finely chopped 1.5 tbsp butter 1 tbsp cold-pressed rapeseed oil 25ml double cream a knob of butter or bacon fat to fry the sourdough, optional a few watercress leaves a splash of Madeira, optional good salt and pepper
Heat the oil and a tablespoon of butter in a medium-sized frying pan and fry the chopped shallot. It will take a minute or two to soften – don’t colour it. Add the garlic and cook for a further minute.
Add the mushrooms to the pan along with the remaining butter. Cook for a couple of minutes – toss the contents in the pan if you can.
Add the cream, herbs and seasoning. Taste and add a splash of Madeira if you fancy. Continue to cook until the mushrooms are done and check the seasoning.
Serve on a slice of sourdough, toasted on a chargrill or pan-fried in butter or bacon fat. Dress with a few watercress leaves and serve.