Culinary explorer and chef Valentine Warner continues his journey around the UK, combining his great passions for food and nature as he searches for the best of natural autumn fare. This week, he is mad for fungi.

Working in harmony with the season and the natural produce available, Valentine captures the intensity of flavour which seasonal produce provides. On the menu are his favourite foraged foods: blackberries, hazelnuts and wild mushrooms.

Sharing his passion for wild fungi and truffles is Dr Paul Thomas – one of the country’s leading authorities of truffle cultivation and an expert forager. After completing a Biology PhD, Paul used his scientific knowledge to successfully cultivate truffles. With Valentine, he heads off to the Derbyshire woods to hunt for the elusive delicacy.

Valentine whips up a quick and simple dish of truffles with scrambled egg on toast. His delicious wild mushroom lasagne is also featured.

Valentine continues with wild crayfish freshly caught from Berkshire’s River Kennet, combined with a stuffing created from hazelnuts gathered from the adjacent banks.

For dessert there are delicious hedgerow blackberries – at their plump peak in the autumn. And for Valentine there is something quintessentially British about jelly and cream. With a dessert of sloe gin and blackberry jelly, he hopes to impress the ladies of Ellerker Women’s Institute in Yorkshire. But the competition is stiff in the village’s annual Craft and Preserve Fair.