The cep is a member of the boletes family, which sports tubes instead of gills underneath the cap. Also known as porcini (piglets) in Italian and once referred to as the ‘penny bun’ in England, this imposing fungus has a delicate hazelnut flavour.

It is a classic culinary fungus which, like the morel, can be successfully dried. Remove the tubes if they look damaged or bruised, but they can be left on if they are still young and firm, before slicing the fungus thinly and threading the slices on a string to dry.

Depending on the development of the fungus, the stem can be wider than the cap before it expands to its full height and regains more usual proportions. Fortunately, this is not a rare fungus, but one for which there is plenty of competition among mushroom pickers.

There are a lot of recipes for this fungus, many of them soups or stews, in which case the fungus needs to be dried, to ensure that the flavour is not lost. Drying the fungus  also means that it can be minced or milled into a powder. This mushroom flour will keep indefinitely in an airtight container.

The naturally sweet nuttiness of the cep makes it a perfect match with butter or cream in anything from sauces to soups, not forgetting that powdered ceps can be added to pasta dough, to make porcini pasta.