The author of cooking books, children’s albums and deputy editor -in -chief of the magazine “Regain” has always loves mushrooms, which he will pick in the woods.
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Part of my heart has always been in Touraine: my family has a country house there from the interwar period. It is a large house in the middle of the woods, in Bel-Air, near Langeais (Indre-et-Loire). I spent my childhood, my weekends, my vacation there. I grew up in a Parisian bourgeois family, with two lawyers, and this place in nature was saving, my breath of fresh air and green, we went there all the time. I am the eldest of five children, I have three brothers and a sister, and my parents let me go alone to Bel-Air very young. I have memories to take the train at 12, you had to change in Tours to go to Langeais.
The neighbors, who kept our dog, came to get me. A little older, I stopped to get there. I loved being alone there with the dog, I was crossed with very powerful emotions. Sometimes I was prevented from sleeping so that I could go for a walk at dawn and cross the animals in the forest. It was wonderful. It is possible that I have done that only two or three times in my life, but I have memories as if it had been all my childhood. Same teenager, I found the simple pleasures there: jump in the puddles, throw stones, nibble blackberries and, above all, collect mushrooms.
As far as I remember, I went to mushrooms. When we took this very young fold, it is a bit like we were part of a sect, we have our habits and secret corners that we do not reveal to anyone. In autumn, you should not count on me on weekends, because I take my knife, my bag, and I go to the forest. This is the activity that I like to do above all, at the same time contemplative, meditative and physical. All the senses wake up, it feels good. The mushroom picking is my yoga to me.
I also learned food with mushrooms. The pleasure of picking, choosing, preparing, the direct link to the earth and nature, the miraculous gifts of it … It is not normal for me to buy mushrooms, even if I am there Sometimes constrained. It was so important that my daughters eat and appreciate this food that I created this recipe for them, something ultra-glued. It is a toast inspired by a Swedish recipe.
When I lived in Sweden, I was going to Kaffe every day, to take an espresso with a Kanterel sandwich, sliced bread garnished with chanterelles and melted cheese, I loved it. I added guancial (pork ventrèche), you can also put a little parsley, provided that children like it. It has to bite and it founds both. It was one of my daughters who baptized him “Croc-Croc”. We can put all the mushrooms that we want, depending on the season: chanterers and chanterelles, of course, small porcini mushrooms, oyster mushrooms, portbellos, sheep’s feet … as long as they are freshly picked. For me, it’s just irresistible.