Nothing can beat the taste of a field mushroom – one of the small joys of recent weeks

They are the basis for one of my favourite recipes, a real food of the gods, writes Janet Street-Porter

A number of the field mushrooms picked by Janet (Janet Street-Porter)

Can I tell you about a free source of joy, that’s legal and widely available? Wild mushrooms!

OK, this autumn has been wet, windy and miserable, but one benefit is a bumper crop of huge saucer-shaped field mushrooms with delicate pink gills. Roaming the marshes in Norfolk I have picked so many I’ve been living on them for weeks.

They're drying on radiators, being turned into soups, risottos and pasta sauce. Just soften some chopped onion in oil and butter, add mushrooms in chunks, some thyme leaves and lemon juice and stew for ten minutes, then stir in a cup of cream, add salt and pepper and let it bubble gently till it thickens – job done!

This is a dream recipe, you can be eating a gourmet meal in less than 20 minutes. And it costs nothing, except the time spent searching acres and acres of fields for those tell-tale white saucers poking through the thick green grass.

Mushroom snobs prefer ceps, also known as porcini, but the wet weather means an army of slugs will find them before you do.

In France, there are calls to ban a phone app which claims to identify fungi which are safe to eat, after it was said to have been used by 732 people who were poisoned, five of whom are still critically ill.

Take my advice, and stick to simple field mushrooms – food of the gods.