Presentation

I have become very conscious of my presentation when cooking recently, and really feel that I have moved up a notch in the last couple of months. That was until yesterday, when I attended a demonstration with Chef Iman Bogen at the Cordon Bleu School here in Paris. It was a real privilege to watch Chef Bogen in action. I think you will agree, his plates put the haute in haute cuisine.

Crème de topinambours aux cèpes et dés de canard fumé

Côtes de veau mijotées en cocotte aux petits légumes et champignons

Moelleux d'amande et mûres tièdes, sabayon pistache

Le déjeuner du laboureur

Since I have been up working since the crack of dawn, I decided that I deserved a good lunch. I went to the fridge and gave it a good clear out and made a meal of the leftovers: roast chicken, ceps, some fabulous Livarot cheese, and of course, baguette. It was sort of a ploughman's lunch with a heavy french accent. And for dessert? Well, I discovered some wonderful 100 per cent magenta rhubarb at the market this morning, and had a lesson in how to pronounce it from the stallholder—'Rhu' like 'la rue': one of the most difficult sounds in French. So, freshly baked rhubarb crumble and vanilla ice-cream for pudding. And for those of you that think that's not very Parisian, watch this space. What a treat!

Livarot cheese, baguette, roast chicken, and pan-fried ceps (clockwise from left)

Rhubarb crumble

Mellow fruitfulness

'Belle de Boskoop' apples

Cèpes

There are two ingredients that traditionally mark the season of mists in France: the first are rouged apples  from the fields of Normandy, and the other are ceps, boletus edulis mushrooms, from the forests and woods.

Ceps look like the archetypal cartoon mushroom. Their tubby little stalks, topped with a cappuccino hat, make you want to prod them in the tummy like the Pilsbury Dough Man. This cuteness, that in Italy has earned them the name of ‘porcini’ or ‘little pigs’,  belies a flavour that makes them rightly prized for eating, with a price tag to match.

Ceps smell of the earth in which they grow, or does the earth in which they grow, smell of cep? I am not quite sure. Delicious raw, they have a much more stringy consistency than white or brown cap mushrooms  more like the centre of a freshly baked baguette than a mushroom. Their extraordinary flavour is scented with hints of ripe orchard apple and walnut, and leaves the aroma of freshly polished mahogany in your nose.

Cooking completely changes the texture and flavour of the cep. Allow them, diced, to gently sigh in a hip bath of butter until lightly browned, and you have something that resembles creamy scallops. Serve on a slice of toasted bread doused in olive oil and you have the perfect autumn comfort food. Who needs cheese on toast?