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As produce entices shoppers at the weekly stalls, local producers eagerly share the best of their crop with chefs and home cooks alike at Lake Geneva Farmer’s Market.

Once you’ve filled your market tote, the question remains how best to highlight late spring’s produce in delicious recipes. At the Lake Geneva School of Cooking, seasonal cooking is both fascinating and fun.

Chef John Bogan will be hosting one such course, focused on the elusive morel mushroom variety, which typically peaks in Illinois mid-May and Wisconsin in late May. Bogan will offer the four-hour classes, which includes the preparation and enjoyment of four courses featuring the main ingredient, on Fridays, May 20 and 27 from 6-10 p.m. and Sundays, May 22 and 29 from 5-9 p.m. for $85 per person.

The mushrooms, delicate and striking in appearance, sprout for a brief month-long period, depending on the region. Look for them in areas of rich soil, often at the root base of decaying Elm, Sycamore and Ash trees or in old apple orchards, for example. According to Chef Bogan, a number of his students arrive with childhood stories of foraging.

“The morels are a very seasonal food,” he said. “There’s a small window of time when you can forage for them,”

“Many people have come to me with great memories of hiking in the woods and finding them each year,” he continued.

Because the morel has a distinctive ridge-like surface, and a hollow center, storage and cooking techniques demand great care. Bogan’s supplier, his former colleague from the French Country Inn whom he refers to simply as Jerry the Mushroom Man, meticulously cleans and bags the mushrooms for use throughout the season. The morels can cost an average of $40 per pound, depending on the season’s variable yield.

The morel class will use the seasonal treat in a variety of presentations, from a mushroom bisque to a Kona-crusted chateau briand with morel reduction. Perhaps the best use of larger mushrooms, which can grow up to four inches in length, maximizes their hollow interior. The class features a crab-stuffed morel course (recipe here), a technique Brogan has also used with short ribs for a hearty entrée course. “There’s a nice nuttiness to morels,” Brogan said. “They crisp up well too. They just elevate a mushroom dish to another level.”

Beyond the fleeting morel season, cooking enthusiasts can find guidance from the cooking school at the Lake Geneva Farmer’s Market with a popular summer class. Chef Bogan incorporates a field trip to the market for Thursday classes, typically from 11 a.m. – 1 p.m., shopping for lunchtime ingredients before preparing the class menu inspired by what he finds.

“As a chef, you get to know the suppliers,” he said. “They are the ones out in the fields. You can talk about the food with them. You know right where it’s coming from.”

The Lake Geneva School of Cooking endorses several local suppliers in their menus and on the school’s website. They stress the freshness and flavor that come from buying local, not to mention the economic impact for the local community.

One such market staple is Slades Corner, Wisconsin-based River Valley Kitchens, who supply a substantial amount of seasonal mushrooms themselves. They even sell home-growing kits, complete with mushroom buds in their own soil-filled box. Another local farm, Wilson Farm Meats in Elkhorn, has hosted pig-butchering workshops as an added bonus to a special meat-focused class at the cooking school.

For Bogan, the interplay between market trips, lessons from local farmers and the seasonally driven menus that result, is something more and more of his students are investing in.

“Now my students want to get more involved in the process,” said Bogan, a chef for over 35 years. “They want to learn even more about cooking. Hey, so do I!”