Autumn is here and it's the season for one of France's favorite rural pastimes; the seeking out, buying, selling, cooking and eating of mushrooms! At this time of year the markets are populated by mushroom merchants displaying a breathtaking variety of freshly picked, dirt-covered mushrooms.

You can catch the fruity apricot aroma typical of a delicious girolle or maybe you'll spot an interesting looking specimen with a spiny under-side, appropriately called Pied-de-Mouton. Other popular varieties include the thick and meaty Cep - below (delicious with scrambled eggs or sautéed in butter), the Coulemelle, which, properly cooked, should melt in your mouth, and the Morille d'Automne which looks more like a sea sponge than a mushroom but is excellent dried or in soups. Finally, if you're lucky, you may even find merchants from the Périgord selling delectable, sought after Black Truffles. This'll cost you, though. Anything from €200-600 a kilo!

Mushroom hunting is a hobby in France, especially in this region and you can often see elderly French men and women scanning forested ground, searching for the best mushrooms. I started my own foraging, the way many expats do, by heading out with local farmers. I quickly learned how to spot and identify mushrooms but more often than not was told, "C'est pas bon." Which is an understatement when you consider that death is a very distinct possibility if you pick and eat the wrong sort of mushroom! If you want to go out on your own, you should check the ‘mushroom hunting' regulations at your local Mairie. Each commune has different rules about where you can hunt and how much you can collect.

Fortunately, France has an army of well-trained pharmacists to help identify your pickings. I learned most about mushrooms by taking everything I've picked to one of these experts and letting them tell me which ones are poisonous. If you want to do your own ‘pre-filtering', it's important to have a field guide to compare the size, color, smell, form of growth (in clusters or singly) and habitat (growing on a pine log vs. growing on a lawn), which are all important clues to a mushroom's identity. Only by considering all of theses details can accurate identification be assured.

Once you get your mushrooms home, it's important to take a spore print. Do this by placing the cap of the mushroom on top of a white piece of paper, cover it with a glass bowl and leave it overnight. In the morning you'll find a colored print of the spores which you can check against pictures in your with your field guide, to identify if it's the right type of mushroom.

If you are new to mushroom cooking, perhaps an idea would be to start at the markets, sweet-talk the stall holders who will be more than happy to part with their ancient French mushroom recipes! Bon appetite!