THE MASTER OF THE MUSHROOMS

Regis Marcon is the chef-owner of the three-Michelin-star restaurant of the
same name in a village near Lyon, France, and an expert in truffles, so when he
offers to teach you to cook, you don’t turn your nose up.
    Well, you do, but only to inhale the marvellous aromas of the kitchen at the Six Senses on
Koh Yao Noi, an islet near Phuket. A wine dinner was in the works.
    Marcon said he loves walking in the forest outside his village to gather wild mushrooms
and greenery for the traditional recipes his parents used at the restaurant before him. He
keeps an eye out for truffles in particular, especially in winter, when they’re at their best.
“You get white truffles in July but they’re not tasty. You get the most aromatic ones from
February to March.
    “From October to December you also get good truffles from Alba, but you can’t smell
them in Alba, ironically enough. All you smell is chocolate, because Alba is home to the Ferrero
chocolate factories!
    Marcon claimed that any discussion of mushrooms has to utilise Latin – “the language
of mushrooms” – but luckily for me his instructions were in English and a little French.
First I had to sniff the truffles to see how truly perfumed they were. Then we were ready
to embark on two dishes: Couci Couca, which is lamb with mushroom praline, and a banana
and morille brochette.
    A lamb saddle was cut into small fillets and fatty lamb cutlets were seared (more fabulous
scents) to extract the juice for a sauce made with carrot, onion, garlic, thyme and the oil of
white truffles from Alba.
    “I don’t add white wine, just the truffle oil,” Marcon says, “even though I don’t like it
because it’s not natural.”
    The lamb saddle was wrapped in dough and baked for 30 minutes at 230 degrees C while
Marcon mixed scrambled egg with black truffles. For a twist he added green lentils grown in
the resort’s garden.
    He handed around portions of the resulting brouillade in eggshells. With the lentils it tasted
like hummus.
    Next we helped layer thin potato slices on top of sliced mushrooms and covered them with
cheese. Once baked, this became the side dish for our lunch rather than the mushroom praline, which we had been served at the wine dinner.
When the lamb was baked medium rare, Marcon tore apart the crust. Surely that bread wasn’t going to waste, especially when there was delicious jus at hand! No, he assured me,
go ahead and eat it.
The garnish for the tender, succulent lamb was mushrooms, green beans and a variety of French grass that together evoked the bucolic charm of Marcon’s French countryside.
In a matter of minutes Marcon whipped up dessert, the banana skewer and morille brochette. You might think a ripe banana is already sweet enough, but with caramel added, a Sunday afternoon could not be sweeter.  

The writer was a guest of the Six Senses Yao Noi Beyond Phuket.