BEFORE SUNRISE

Mushroom foraging is something close to a national sport in Poland and across Slavic countries. By the end of July, on any walk through the woods, anyone who has ever been bitten by it, and I mean truly bitten, initiated, will be scanning the forest floor with a kind of longing. By mid-September the obsession reaches its peak.

Mushrooms are magical. Mushrooms are jealous. No forager will ever reveal their favourite spots, not for any price, not under any pressure. If they find a stranger in their place, it is treated as an act of aggression, an invasion of foreign forces onto sovereign territory. This is in our blood. Trespassing on someone's mushroom ground is worse than almost anything else you could do.

When I was a child, we spent summers at my grandmother's house in the countryside. My father would wake me before sunrise and we would drift through the forest together, looking. I never quite understood why it had to be so early. I never complained. Those were extraordinary moments. To watch the forest wake. To listen to what the birds were telling each other. I remember the smell of the trees warming slowly in the morning sun. The damp of the moss rising around us. And I remember the particular joy, almost electric, of spotting a penny bun or a birch bolete half-hidden in that moss, its cap still wet, still gleaming.

Afterwards, there was lunch. A sauce, fragrant and rich, with a great deal of green parsley and cream.

That love of foraging, planted in me by my father, I have carried through my entire adult life. I brought it with me here, to Wales. Every year, in late summer and autumn, we move through these beautiful Welsh woods for hours at a time, sometimes an entire day. We don't go before sunrise the way my father did. But we give it the time it deserves.

I know the English will never understand this. People are divided into two kinds, those who forage and those who fear what grows in the ground. The English and the Poles belong to these two very different tribes. Honestly, it doesn't trouble me at all. If anything, I am grateful for it. My secret places have no intruders. No competition whatsoever.

Mushrooms are remarkable food. When I was studying at catering college, learning about the nutritional properties of different ingredients, the textbooks were clear on the subject: mushrooms offer flavour, and little else. Difficult to digest. No real nutritional value.

I never believed it. From a young age I was certain that nature must balance itself. If some mushrooms were poison, others had to be their opposite. Not long after, I discovered Chinese medicine. And eventually the science caught up with what I had always felt to be true.

Wild Mushroom Sauce with Cream and Parsley

You will need: fresh or dried wild mushrooms, butter, a little onion, a little garlic, dry white wine, full-fat cream, fresh flat-leaf parsley, dried lovage, dried thyme, salt, black pepper.

Melt the butter and soften the onion gently, finely chopped, and not too much of it. It should be background, not foreground. Add a little garlic. Add the mushrooms. If using dried, soak them first and squeeze well; the soaking water, strained, can go into the sauce and will add considerable depth. When the mushrooms have released their fragrance, add a splash of white wine and let it cook off. Then add the cream, enough to bring the sauce together, but not so much that it becomes milky. It should be rich and present. Season with salt, pepper, a pinch of dried lovage and thyme. Finish with a generous handful of freshly chopped parsley. Serve immediately.