HOW TO FORAGE.....ITS FREE, AND COULD BE FUN

YESTERDAY'S VISIT TO ROYAL HORTICULTURAL SOCIETY SHOW, 9 OCT

I did not know what to expect at this show, but, apart from admiring the fruit and vegetables, there was a mine of gen about foraging.

FORAGING

It never has been of much interest to me, but since listening to two talks about it, I think I will have to consider foraging a bit more seriously!

Although I did buy, years ago, a book called Food for Free, by Richard Mabey, first published in 1972.

TALK BY YUN HIDER, FROM PEMBROKESHIRE, WALES

He had a large table full of bits and pieces that he had foraged, and that you can eat (or even drink), and at the back of the room, several small trees, such as crab apple, rowan.

His company is  WILDFOODCENTRE.ORG

Web site of Wild Food Centre

Yun told us that he provides his foraged herbs, leaves, flowers, fruit etc to the top chefs, including those  very well known in London.  He has been a forager for about 20 years.

The foraged plants are generally used by chefs as garnish (not in bulk) or as added flavours, and he can only gather in small quantities.  He uses the Ordnance Survey maps to find areas where plants should be available, such as estuaries, the area near a stream or river, or hedgerows and edges of woods.

WATCH OUT, PROCEED WITH CARE, GET A BOOK COLLECTION

Yun stressed that it is important to get to know a plant, (for instance, stinging nettles)  well before you eat it, in other words proceed slowly, read up books on the subject, and make a point of looking at old herbals or old recipe books, if you can.

He did not mention collecting mushrooms, as these are provided by other collectors for the restaurant trade.

PLANTS YOU CAN FORAGE

I will list some plants he showed us, and which he tasted (I presume to show us they are not poisonous)

Nettle leaaf, pick in the spring.  Make nettle tea,  use in a stir fry, the juice can be used to prevent hair-loss.

Also you can make a nettle syrup, store it, then mix with dry white wine and vodka for a cocktail called 'Sting'.

Dandelion leaf, (blanch it, bitter is good, he said). You can fry it in deep fat, it is lovely and crispy and then not bitter.

Wood sorrel, (oxalis) had oxalic acid, which is considered poisonous, but he uses it as a garnish, and even included it in a dish prepared for HM The Queen by a top chef.  It is a tiny little leaf.

Apparently the rhizome of wood sorrel was used by American Indians to feed their horses, to develop muscle tone.

SOME PLANTS ARE VERY POISONOUS, i.e. FOXGLOVE, YEW, HEMLOCK

He said be wary of Google, as it is not edited and can give incorrect information.

Hawthorn, eat fresh leaves in spring, also the blossom. You can make jelly from hawthorn berries (haws).  Dried berries are also good, with a different flavour.

Blackberries, apart from the berries, you can eat fresh leaves in spring, which taste good, and can make into tea. Flowers are used as a garnish by chefs.  The new stems, fleshy, can be chopped up and candied as a kind of sweet.

Cow parsley.  He advised not using this, although its other name is wild chervil;  it is of the same family as hemlock, as is hogweed.  He does not pick cow parsley.

Hogweed can be eaten, but not the giant one which is poisonous and it has red spots on its stem.

Rock samphire.  This is a different plant from marsh samphire which you can buy at a fishmongers in season.  Rock samphire grows on the sea cliffs and is a plant which was mentioned in one of the history plays by Shakespeare.

Hairy bittercress.  Chefs love this one.  You can eat the flower, leaves.  It comes up all over my garden in spring, so I will try this one.

JUST A FEW MORE, OF MANY

Pennywort, ground elder (stems only), sorrel, seabeet, scurvy grass (but not the dried leaf), sea cabbage, crab apples, rose hips (eat the flesh not the hairy covering to the seed itself).

Cleavers, meadowsweet (smells like honey, boil it in milk, don't eat it raw).  Plantain, eat it early in the year. Elderflowers, easy to make 'champagne', very quickly.  Gorse flowers.  Alexanders, use stalks in the spring and again in the autumn, peeled, and he puts it with rabbit stew.

BEECH LEAF NOYAU

Yun showed us (and indeed drank some) of this liqueur, which is made by picking beech leaves when young, filling a large jar, like a kilner jar, adding a spirit like gin or vodka, leaving and then decanting into a bottle.  There are several recipies for this which I found via Google.  Such as these

Wild Food Mary

Woodland Trust

 Over the Gate

Nature+Culture

THE SECOND TALK BY CLAUDIO BINCOLETTO

Well I will do a post about this later