There is a very childlike excitement in penetrating beneath the dense cover of the forest to unearth mushrooms. We fill our nostrils with the scent of humus, we are startled by rifle shots in the distance, we track down the slightest codling with the ardor of a treasure hunter. Cagette in one hand, small pruning hook in the other, Hubert Chanove ceases for a moment to be the 33-year-old starred chef who sets sparks at the Refuge des gourmets, located in the town of Machilly (Haute-Savoie). With a beret screwed onto his head, he has the enthusiasm of a little boy as he kneels near a large family of Bordeaux porcini mushrooms resting in the moss, under the spruce trees. “My brigade was almost sure that I wouldn’t find anything this morning, it will amaze them”he laughs.
Its mushroom corner is located on the edge of a communal path which winds through the Voirons massif, a small mountain range covered with pine trees between the Geneva mountains and the Haut-Savoyard Chablais. He knows this path by heart. It was already there that he came to hunt down small plant prey with his father, Jean-Marie Chanove, who ran Le Refuge des gourmets before him. Twenty years ago, his father set up a menu “any mushroom”, to which the son remained faithful, but mainly using local varieties. And, every year, he renews the proposals. “It’s in my interest, because regulars keep the cards and come find me in the kitchen if I unintentionally make duplicates on the dishes! »he laughs.
The passion mushroom gives a little taste of the undergrowth to many beautiful tables in autumn. A little more so since the Slow Food movement (founded in Italy in 1986), advocating a return to good regional products, has expanded and internationalized. What could be more local and more natural than wild mushrooms, picked in a nearby clearing? Some establishments have made it the heart of their cuisine, such as the Restaurant Marcon, run by the eponymous family, Régis and his two sons, Jacques and Paul, in a small village in Haute-Loire, Saint-Bonnet-le-Froid. There, mushrooms are celebrated until dessert, and a reinvented Williams pear can be surrounded by a flowing morel caramel!
“The Marcons inspired me, slips Hubert Chanove, continuing his quest under the spruce trees. But also Jean Sulpice, with whom I worked when he was at Oxalys, in Val-Thorens, at an altitude of 2,300 meters. Jean worked from what he found during the picking: wild herbs, oxalis, gentian, fir buds… I reproduce this gleaning activity here, including with mushrooms. Above all, I work with varieties collected around fifteen kilometers from the restaurant. But as the quantities found are rarely sufficient, I do not stop myself from going to draw elsewhere in France, in Alsace or in the Loire. »
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