Recreate this wild mushrooms and horseradish labneh on toast, then check out our veggie sausage, spinach and mushroom fry with pesto toast, rarebit mushrooms with pickle dressing and more mushroom recipes.
Rosie says, "In the burnished depths of the end of autumn, the kitchen becomes my retreat: a place I long to get back to by the end of a frosty walk or rainy dash for errands. While just a matter of months ago, its doors were flung open to welcome the breeze and sunshine – its oven and hobs neglected in favour of a barbecue or picnic blanket – now it’s the glowing hearth of the house, its windows fugged up with steam, its creaky wooden door failing to contain the sumptuous smells wafting from simmering pots. This time of year means comfort food and, for me, there’s nothing more comforting than mushrooms on toast, a dish that has its roots in a very special, sepia-tinged memory from my childhood.
There was a period of a few years, before I got too distracted by Nintendo and Saturday morning telly, when I used to go out with my dad in the very early, misty autumn mornings to hunt out the delicious field mushrooms that grew near our house. I remember that we used to get up while it was still dark – which I hated – pull on wellies and waterproofs, and rustle down the country lane by torchlight, clambering over a rickety stile and wading up a steep hill, skirting the statuesque horses that could get feisty if you got too close.
My dad could be obsessive – hence the early starts “to beat the flies” – and I’m not sure how but he always knew where to find the best mushrooms: near big, old trees, often in danger (the mushrooms, that is) of being trampled by sheep. Perhaps it was down to his frugal, postwar childhood in rural Kent, the youngest son of a widowed mother, who counted scrumping for apples and foraging for cobnuts among his hobbies, but he had a real nose for a good mushroom patch.
I remember one time we really cleaned up and came home with a carrier bag full of plump, damp mushrooms, flecked and fragrant with grass and rotten leaves, which my dad carefully cleaned, then fried in sizzling slicks of butter before piling them onto hot toast. When I put the warm, buttery toast to my lips, the crunch of the bread and the savoury squish of the mushrooms was a revelation. I was in heaven and, to this day, mushrooms on toast is a dish I make religiously. It reminds me of my dear dad – it’s my Proustian madeleine – and it’s something I’ve served at many a pop-up or dinner, reimagined in different ways. This version introduces a cooling swoosh of fresh labneh shot through with fiery horseradish, and it makes a wonderful light lunch or starter for an autumnal gathering."