Wild Mushroom Soup

It is the end of October, Halloween, All Saints Day, (or Toussaint) and the weather here in France is warm and wet - perfect for mushrooms!

Les Trois Chenes bed and breakfast is set in the rolling hills, oak and chestnut woodlands, and green pastures grazed by the famous Limousin cattle, sheep and horses. The farming techniques are relatively natural with less emphasis on chemicals, herbicides, insecticides, artificial fertilizers and such like. Here the farmers use green manures and good, old fashioned animal manures. So it's not surprising really, to find that over the last few day mushrooms have been sprouting on grass verges along the roadside, on lawns but, above all, on the gentle slopes grazed by sheep.

A few leisurely walks along our lovely footpaths and country lanes in the soft, autumn sunshine soon yielded kilos of mushroom and a few puffballs with almost no effort what-so-ever.

The rule with picking wild mushrooms and funghi is take advice or leave well alone if you have any doubt at all that you know what you are picking. Eating the wrong type can make you very ill indeed or even kill you.

Having read about funghi generally, identified our mushrooms in Roger Phillips' excellent books (see below) and checked with the local people, I felt confident we had the real thing.

These mushrooms are from the Agaricus family, as are cultivated mushrooms and field mushrooms. I think the ones we collected might be Agaricus campestris, commonly found in meadows and they best match the pictures. The French call them rosés des prés.

When picking from fields with stock in them, especially sheep, you must be very careful to cook them thoroughly or you can pick up parasites.

• 1 table spoon sunflower oil or butter
• 400 grams of wild or cultivated mushrooms
• 2 onions
• 1 bunch of watercress (or alternative greens)
• 2 cloves of garlic
• 1.5 litres of chicken or vegetable stock (homemade or stock cube)
• 2 egg yolks (optional)
  
• 2 tablespoons of double cream, creme fraiche, yogurt or similar (optional)
• 1 good tablespoon of pineau des Charentes, sherry or such like
• Pepper corns or ground pepper

This recipe is suitable for vegans and vegetarians. Adapt the recipe by using vegetable equivalents. If you don't eat egg, thicken the soup with a little cornflour. You can add yeast extract or soy sauce to flavour and if you can't find a suitable substitute for dairy products, simply omit.

You can use watercress, but I don't have any so I substituted! I have lots of sorrel in the garden, thanks to the French partiality to the herb, and lots of dandelions, thanks to my inability to get round to the weeding! You could also use landcress, lettuce, lambs lettuce, parsely, chickweed or a mixture of all these and others. Beware of using very strongly flavoured herbs like fennel as they could adversely affect the taste of the soup.

I have chopped the onions and mushrooms roughly, but cut the garlic into finer slices and then diced it, and the greens, because dandelion can be a little tough, I have shredded finely.

I have also added some pepper corns coarsley ground with a mortar and pestle. I love this peppery bite. You can also just use ground black pepper or any other pepper to hand.

Heat the oil or butter in the pan and fry the mushrooms and onion gently for about 5 minutes. Add the chopped greens, garlic and stock, then simmer for 20 minutes or so.

Separate the egg yolks

Do this by cracking the egg carefully, opening up and letting the white drip out. The pass the yolk, carefully, into the other half of the shell, more white should come out.

Mix the cream and egg yolks together

After the soup has cooked turn off the heat. Add a little cooled soup to the egg yolk and cream mixture, then add to the soup and mix quickly. Bring back to the boil slowly, stirring all the time until thickened but don't boil.

Add a good splash of Pineau, sherry, brandy or such like to taste. You can use the soy or yeast extract if you prefer, and give it a good stir.

Pour into the soup bowls and garnish with parsley, a swirl of cream if you are using a liquid cream; (my creme fraiche was too thick to do this), or you could add some blue cheese such as Stilton. I have used a local blue cheese, Fourme d'Ambert but our local Bleu d'Auvergne or Rochefort would also be perfect.

When we opened our Guest House in Videix, we chose the famous Limousin Porcelain, and I think this strong but beautifully translucent china is both elegant and simple. The flowers are chrysathemums, traditionally sold at this time to celebrate Toussaint.