Autumn has arrived in our beautiful region of Haute Savoie and Aulps Valley is covered in shades of orange. The perfect opportunity to come and admire nature’s stunning transition while you’re exploring the area. Take a sharpened Opinel No. 8 knife with you to collect any mushrooms you see on the way. The mushroom season started early September and you won’t need to go very far into the forest to find them.
Before setting off, we highly recommend checking it’s not an annual hunting day. In an effort to help both foragers and hunters make the most of the forest, you’ll find all the information you need on www.chasseco.fr and on the Chasseco application. In Morzine, hunting days are usually on Tuesdays, Thursdays, Saturdays, Sundays and public holidays. But check anyway before you leave, you can never be too careful.
While out foraging, avoid toadstools and instead look for chanterelle, boletus, morel, dryad’s saddle mushrooms and many others. You’ll need to plan your outing foraging for mushrooms. You’ll need a basket or backpack and several reusable plastic bags or tote bags. You’ll need to bring different bags so you can separate the mushrooms you find and avoid mixing different ones together because if just one turns out to be poisonous and therefore inedible, it will contaminate all the others in the same bag, even if they were edible mushrooms. Once you’ve finished your outing, you can get them checked at a local pharmacy. Click here to find them. Once your mushrooms have been confirmed as edible, all that’s left to do is cook them and then enjoy eating these delicious local products.
If you’re not sure how to cook them, and you’d like a change from the usual mushroom omelette, here’s one of our favourite recipes. Who knew that tartiflette and fresh mushrooms would go so well together? This recipe is similar to croziflette using our local pasta, buckwheat crozets. Preparation time is 20 min and cooking time is 30 min, so this great sharing dish takes 50 min altogether to make and is best served with a bottle of white wine and a green salad.
LA CROziflette
Preparation:
1. Cook the crozets pasta in boiling water for 10 minutes, drain and then set aside.
2. While the pasta is cooking, rehydrate the mushrooms with white wine and leave in a bowl for 10 minutes.
3. Meanwhile, fry the lardons and the diced onion in a pan. Then add the mushrooms and wine mixture and fry for another 5 minutes on a low heat. Add pepper and some grated nutmeg.
4. Preheat the oven to 180°C.
5. Pour the lardons-mushrooms-onion mixture over the top of the crozets pasta and fold in to mix together.
6. Place the mixture into individuals dishes or one big oven dish.
7. Pour the cream over the top then place slices of reblochon onto the crozets pasta and bake in the oven for 30 minutes, until the cheese has completely melted and started to turn golden brown. Bake for a few minutes longer if necessary.
8. Serve with a simple, green salad and enjoy…
Thematics
