Autumn in Wicklow is the time for mushroom gathering. Damp overcast afternoons can be spent hunting the cep, since your eyes rarely look up to the lowering skies. Deep in the forests lining the Avonmore, along the deer-tracks, is one habitat of the boletus edulis. It's a race between the forager and the slugs, snails and flies that also find this fungus a source of delight.

There are consolation prizes for the unlucky. No ceps, but perhaps the apricot blaze of the chanterelle, the smooth violet of the wood blewit or the yellow abundance of the honey fungus. All grow in the woods, and all add flavour to a meal. Failing these, the open pastures produce agarics and parasols which although not first division, make a welcome trugful for the mycophage.

If the rain is not too overpowering, I like to forage close to home on a Sunday morning. Sometimes friends come along for the hunt, others want only to eat the spoils. Occasionally I feel like the whiting and the snail; I don't really want to go for a walk just for the sake of it. I need a porpoise, and mushrooming is as good a purpose as any.

Ceps, or penny buns, are perfect for the larder. If you should be lucky enough to pick more than you can eat, you can dry the surplus by slicing them thinly and leaving them racked above a radiator. When needed, soak them in a little water for twenty minutes or so and they will reconstitute. A friend of mine in Italy dries his sliced ceps on a sprig of blackthorn that he has stuck in a flower pot. Each spike is home to a slice of cep and they dry well like this, as well as looking good.

Recently, just back from Italy, I wanted to make pasta con salsa di porcini - that is with a cep sauce. As luck would have it we found two good specimens, weighing together a bit less than a pound. To make enough sauce for four I like to use a about pound of mushrooms. You can always pad out your ceps with some lesser mushrooms if you need to. Put a little virgin olive oil in a frying pan and add the ceps finely chopped. Cover the pan and let them cook on a low heat for twenty minutes. Now add 4 ounces of grated white cheddar, a little butter, a drop of cream and a generous pinch of salt - mushrooms are salt-greedy. Stir well, and the sauce is made. I like to use eliche or spirals for this sauce, since this shape holds the sauce better than others.

A large cep - I've found them up to 800 grammes - can be sliced like a steak. Dip the slices in egg and breadcrumbs and fry till golden on both sides. The flesh stays firms and doesn't shrink, so this method of cooking works well. If you are fortunate enough to find a giant puffball then you can cook it like this as well - poor man's veal cutlet.