Post by whisker on Jul 22, 2011 11:18:21 GMT
This is a real good article well worth a read.
..........
Caroline Davey, the owner of Fat Hen Wild Food Foraging and Cooking School (www.fathen.org), doesn’t look concerned. She’s used to helping witless 21st century cooks learn that food doesn’t have to come from plastic bags, supermarkets – or even a plain old veggie patch.
With the Celtic Sea on the horizon, she explains the delicate purple flowers are common mallow plants, which can be found along fields, on waste ground, in gardens and on path edges, and are a staple in Middle Eastern soups.
Hedgerows, railway banks and seashores teem with edible leaves, flowers and herbs, Davey points out. The only difficulty is identifying them.
“What do you think that is?” she asks innocently, gesturing to a familiar-looking rural plant.
“Cow parsley,” I venture.
She looks worried.
“No, it’s hemlock and it’s deadly. You can, however, eat the leaves and the stems of cow parsley,” she adds cheerfully. “It’s known as wild chervil.”
The group nod wisely, very aware they are at Davey’s mercy.
“In general, be careful of picking wild food from a cultivated area, as it could be covered in pesticides,” she adds, as we eagerly fill our woven baskets with the aforementioned mallow. “But I know the farmer here, so it’s OK.”
Our three-hour foraging morning will culminate in a lunch cooked by Rick Stein-trained chef Mark Devonshire: a journey designed to get newbie foragers from ditch to dinner party.
The light summer rain sprinkles our pale faces as we follow Davey’s example, grabbing at wild fennel and rock samphire, both to be used in our monkfish lunch dish.
“It was my husband that got me into this,” says former botanist Davey. “He’d come home with the wrong things, hoping we could eat them. I’d tell him, ‘No, they’ll kill you,’ and eventually I thought, ‘Hang on…’”
She stops suddenly and reaches down to pick some leaves off what looks like a green weed.
“We call this nature’s wasabi.”
Offering me a bite, I gnaw on the leaf and a dazzlingly bitter taste explodes in my mouth.
Suddenly I understand the thrill of foraging. Forgetting my damp hair and cold hands, I’m overwhelmed this plant can be found growing wild in Britain and yet tastes as delicious as anything I’ve eaten in a Japanese restaurant.
Around me, the field transforms into an unlabelled outdoor supermarket.
We go on to pick alexanders leaves for a pasta dish, common sorrel, a citrusy, thirst-quenching leaf for use in our salad, and elderflowers to pop in our bread and butter pudding dessert.
Once back at the Fat Hen ranch, head chef Devonshire grabs our baskets and gets cooking.
As a former citizen of Padstein, he’s well used to cooking with seashore plants such as dandelion nettles and samphire, but he says, since meeting Davey, he’s been blown away by how many more plants there are to eat.
He starts by making soda bread, explaining that incorporating nettles and wild garlic leaves will help the loaf retain moisture.
Then he brings out pre-pickled samphire, bottled with white wine vinegar, bay leaves, cinnamon and coriander seeds, and uses it to garnish slow-cooked pork, which then is laid on small pieces of toasted soda bread.
“That starter should keep you going until lunch,” he says. “Samphire, when it’s pickled, cuts through rich flavours, like this meat.”
We dive in, enjoying the contrast of the sharp, salty samphire, against the melty pork.
For the most part, Devonshire uses our foraged foods to add taste and texture to dishes, rather than as main ingredients. Since working in Cornwall, he’s become a particular fan of seaweed, which lends itself to being roasted or fried, Japanese-style.
“I like cooking it in the oven with sesame oil, then sprinkling it with Turkish chilli flakes and salt to serve.
“There are 365 types of seaweed. I use six in my cooking and laver’s my favourite.”
After two hours in the kitchen, sipping homemade elderflower cordial, we troop into a converted barn for lunch, enlightened and inspired by our hours spent at the very start of the food chain.
And it goes without saying that the food is delicious.
Want to forage?
If you suspect your back garden is brimming with edibles, check out a course near you and learn how to do it.
North Yorkshire: Have fun in the great outdoors at Taste The Wild (www.tastethewild.co.uk)
Ireland: Learn how to open up to nature at Lavistown House (www.lavistownhouse.ie)
East Midlands: Take the family back to their roots with Natural England’s foraging events (www.naturalengland.org.uk)
Scotland: Find some serious funghi up in the Highlands (http://highlandholidaycottages.blogspot.com)
Manchester: Go back to basics with these hunter gatherer-style courses (www.basicbushcraft.org.uk)
Wales: Forage gourmet-style at The Fox Hunter (www.thefoxhunter.com)
Wild food recipes
Here are three recipes from the Fat Hen kitchen to try at home…
Soda bread starter with wild herbs, samphire and pork
(Makes 3 medium sized loaves)
1.5kg white bread flour or a mix of white and wholemeal
2 pints of buttermilk
40g salt
32g bicarbonate of soda
Handful of oats
Mix of fresh seaweeds and/or wild garlic leaves, mugwort or wild fennel
Preheat your oven to 180C/Gas Mark 4. Sift flour into a wide basin-like bowl. Sift in salt and bicarbonate of soda. Mix thoroughly. Make a well in the centre of your mix and begin pouring in the buttermilk.
The trick of good soda bread is to just mix enough so it forms a nice pillowy synchronised mass in the centre of your bowl – enough to form a dough, but not too much for it to become stodgy. A wet dough gives the best results.
Add your seaweeds and wild herbs at this point and when you have the dough right, lightly flour your work surface and tip your dough onto it.
Separate the dough into three equal pieces and ever so gently make them into a round-ish form. Slash the top of each in a cross shape and place on a lightly floured baking sheet. Sprinkle liberally with oats.
Bake for 35-45 minutes. The loaves should look tawny brown and knobbly. Tap the underside of each loaf – it should sound hollow. Cool on wire racks and top with a tasty treat, such as pork rillettes and/or samphire.
Monkfish & serrano ham with marsh samphire rostis and rock samphire fritters
(Serves 4)
For the Monkfish:
2 x monkfish tail fillets (approx 150g each)
8 slices Spanish serrano ham
1tbsp wild fennel
1tbsp wild chervil
50g unsalted butter
6tbsp olive oil
Bottle of salsa verde
Salt and freshly ground black pepper
For the Marsh Samphire Rosti:
2 large potatoes
Large handful of marsh samphire tips
For the Rock Samphire Fritters:
8 good-sized sprigs of rock samphire
50g seasoned gram flour to dip
200ml buttermilk
Rapeseed oil for frying
Finely chop the wild fennel and chervil, mix together with olive oil and season.
Skin the monkfish tails. Place in a bowl and cover with the marinade.
Begin the marsh samphire rosti by peeling and cutting the potatoes in half. Boil for five minutes, drain and leave to cool.
Arrange slices of Serrano ham side by side on a work surface. Place the fish on the ham and roll up the sides. Place on a baking tray. Cook in an oven at 200C/Gas Mark 6 for 12-15 minutes.
Grate the cooled potatoes and season.
Add one handful of washed, finely chopped marsh samphire and stir into the potato mixture.
Heat a non-stick frying pan with butter and olive oil. When hot, place a rosti ring in the pan and fill with the grated potato. Be careful not to make the rosti too thick.
Cook for two to three minutes and remove the ring. Turn the rosti over and cook until golden brown.
Finally, to make the rock samphire fritters, heat your rapeseed oil in a saucepan or deep fat fryer to 180C. Take a sprig of rock samphire, dip into a bowl of buttermilk, followed by a seasoned bowl of gram flour.
Lower into the hot oil and fry until golden.
Serve dish with salsa verde.
Panettone & elderflower bread and butter pudding with elderflower fritters
(Serves 8)
For the Bread & Butter Pudding:
6 classic panettone, sliced
50g unsalted butter
4 large eggs, lightly beaten
450ml double cream
225ml milk
175g caster sugar
4 elderflower heads
For the Elderflower Fritters:
8 elderflower heads
Sunflower oil
115g plain flour
250ml cold sparkling mineral water
1 egg
Pinch of salt
Icing sugar
Inspect the elderflowers for any insects. Gently heat the milk and cream with the elderflower heads in a saucepan. Remove from the heat and leave to cool.
Slice the panettone and butter one side. Place butter side down in a baking dish. Repeat until all the panettone has been used.
Sieve the milk into a bowl. Add the beaten eggs, sugar and whisk. Pour over the panettone, sprinkle some granulated sugar on top and leave to stand for one hour.
Preheat the oven to 180C/Gas Mark 4. Place in a bain-marie and bake for one hour until golden.
To make the elderflower fritters, mix ingredients together to form a batter. Heat oil in a pan up to 180C. Holding the stalk end, dip the elderflower into the batter and carefully place into pan of hot oil. Leave until cooked to a golden colour.
Drain with a slotted spoon onto a kitchen towel. Place in bowl and sprinkle with icing sugar.
Serve with the bread and butter pudding and a dollop of ice cream.
All recipes courtesy of www.discoverunearthed.com
..........
Caroline Davey, the owner of Fat Hen Wild Food Foraging and Cooking School (www.fathen.org), doesn’t look concerned. She’s used to helping witless 21st century cooks learn that food doesn’t have to come from plastic bags, supermarkets – or even a plain old veggie patch.
With the Celtic Sea on the horizon, she explains the delicate purple flowers are common mallow plants, which can be found along fields, on waste ground, in gardens and on path edges, and are a staple in Middle Eastern soups.
Hedgerows, railway banks and seashores teem with edible leaves, flowers and herbs, Davey points out. The only difficulty is identifying them.
“What do you think that is?” she asks innocently, gesturing to a familiar-looking rural plant.
“Cow parsley,” I venture.
She looks worried.
“No, it’s hemlock and it’s deadly. You can, however, eat the leaves and the stems of cow parsley,” she adds cheerfully. “It’s known as wild chervil.”
The group nod wisely, very aware they are at Davey’s mercy.
“In general, be careful of picking wild food from a cultivated area, as it could be covered in pesticides,” she adds, as we eagerly fill our woven baskets with the aforementioned mallow. “But I know the farmer here, so it’s OK.”
Our three-hour foraging morning will culminate in a lunch cooked by Rick Stein-trained chef Mark Devonshire: a journey designed to get newbie foragers from ditch to dinner party.
The light summer rain sprinkles our pale faces as we follow Davey’s example, grabbing at wild fennel and rock samphire, both to be used in our monkfish lunch dish.
“It was my husband that got me into this,” says former botanist Davey. “He’d come home with the wrong things, hoping we could eat them. I’d tell him, ‘No, they’ll kill you,’ and eventually I thought, ‘Hang on…’”
She stops suddenly and reaches down to pick some leaves off what looks like a green weed.
“We call this nature’s wasabi.”
Offering me a bite, I gnaw on the leaf and a dazzlingly bitter taste explodes in my mouth.
Suddenly I understand the thrill of foraging. Forgetting my damp hair and cold hands, I’m overwhelmed this plant can be found growing wild in Britain and yet tastes as delicious as anything I’ve eaten in a Japanese restaurant.
Around me, the field transforms into an unlabelled outdoor supermarket.
We go on to pick alexanders leaves for a pasta dish, common sorrel, a citrusy, thirst-quenching leaf for use in our salad, and elderflowers to pop in our bread and butter pudding dessert.
Once back at the Fat Hen ranch, head chef Devonshire grabs our baskets and gets cooking.
As a former citizen of Padstein, he’s well used to cooking with seashore plants such as dandelion nettles and samphire, but he says, since meeting Davey, he’s been blown away by how many more plants there are to eat.
He starts by making soda bread, explaining that incorporating nettles and wild garlic leaves will help the loaf retain moisture.
Then he brings out pre-pickled samphire, bottled with white wine vinegar, bay leaves, cinnamon and coriander seeds, and uses it to garnish slow-cooked pork, which then is laid on small pieces of toasted soda bread.
“That starter should keep you going until lunch,” he says. “Samphire, when it’s pickled, cuts through rich flavours, like this meat.”
We dive in, enjoying the contrast of the sharp, salty samphire, against the melty pork.
For the most part, Devonshire uses our foraged foods to add taste and texture to dishes, rather than as main ingredients. Since working in Cornwall, he’s become a particular fan of seaweed, which lends itself to being roasted or fried, Japanese-style.
“I like cooking it in the oven with sesame oil, then sprinkling it with Turkish chilli flakes and salt to serve.
“There are 365 types of seaweed. I use six in my cooking and laver’s my favourite.”
After two hours in the kitchen, sipping homemade elderflower cordial, we troop into a converted barn for lunch, enlightened and inspired by our hours spent at the very start of the food chain.
And it goes without saying that the food is delicious.
Want to forage?
If you suspect your back garden is brimming with edibles, check out a course near you and learn how to do it.
North Yorkshire: Have fun in the great outdoors at Taste The Wild (www.tastethewild.co.uk)
Ireland: Learn how to open up to nature at Lavistown House (www.lavistownhouse.ie)
East Midlands: Take the family back to their roots with Natural England’s foraging events (www.naturalengland.org.uk)
Scotland: Find some serious funghi up in the Highlands (http://highlandholidaycottages.blogspot.com)
Manchester: Go back to basics with these hunter gatherer-style courses (www.basicbushcraft.org.uk)
Wales: Forage gourmet-style at The Fox Hunter (www.thefoxhunter.com)
Wild food recipes
Here are three recipes from the Fat Hen kitchen to try at home…
Soda bread starter with wild herbs, samphire and pork
(Makes 3 medium sized loaves)
1.5kg white bread flour or a mix of white and wholemeal
2 pints of buttermilk
40g salt
32g bicarbonate of soda
Handful of oats
Mix of fresh seaweeds and/or wild garlic leaves, mugwort or wild fennel
Preheat your oven to 180C/Gas Mark 4. Sift flour into a wide basin-like bowl. Sift in salt and bicarbonate of soda. Mix thoroughly. Make a well in the centre of your mix and begin pouring in the buttermilk.
The trick of good soda bread is to just mix enough so it forms a nice pillowy synchronised mass in the centre of your bowl – enough to form a dough, but not too much for it to become stodgy. A wet dough gives the best results.
Add your seaweeds and wild herbs at this point and when you have the dough right, lightly flour your work surface and tip your dough onto it.
Separate the dough into three equal pieces and ever so gently make them into a round-ish form. Slash the top of each in a cross shape and place on a lightly floured baking sheet. Sprinkle liberally with oats.
Bake for 35-45 minutes. The loaves should look tawny brown and knobbly. Tap the underside of each loaf – it should sound hollow. Cool on wire racks and top with a tasty treat, such as pork rillettes and/or samphire.
Monkfish & serrano ham with marsh samphire rostis and rock samphire fritters
(Serves 4)
For the Monkfish:
2 x monkfish tail fillets (approx 150g each)
8 slices Spanish serrano ham
1tbsp wild fennel
1tbsp wild chervil
50g unsalted butter
6tbsp olive oil
Bottle of salsa verde
Salt and freshly ground black pepper
For the Marsh Samphire Rosti:
2 large potatoes
Large handful of marsh samphire tips
For the Rock Samphire Fritters:
8 good-sized sprigs of rock samphire
50g seasoned gram flour to dip
200ml buttermilk
Rapeseed oil for frying
Finely chop the wild fennel and chervil, mix together with olive oil and season.
Skin the monkfish tails. Place in a bowl and cover with the marinade.
Begin the marsh samphire rosti by peeling and cutting the potatoes in half. Boil for five minutes, drain and leave to cool.
Arrange slices of Serrano ham side by side on a work surface. Place the fish on the ham and roll up the sides. Place on a baking tray. Cook in an oven at 200C/Gas Mark 6 for 12-15 minutes.
Grate the cooled potatoes and season.
Add one handful of washed, finely chopped marsh samphire and stir into the potato mixture.
Heat a non-stick frying pan with butter and olive oil. When hot, place a rosti ring in the pan and fill with the grated potato. Be careful not to make the rosti too thick.
Cook for two to three minutes and remove the ring. Turn the rosti over and cook until golden brown.
Finally, to make the rock samphire fritters, heat your rapeseed oil in a saucepan or deep fat fryer to 180C. Take a sprig of rock samphire, dip into a bowl of buttermilk, followed by a seasoned bowl of gram flour.
Lower into the hot oil and fry until golden.
Serve dish with salsa verde.
Panettone & elderflower bread and butter pudding with elderflower fritters
(Serves 8)
For the Bread & Butter Pudding:
6 classic panettone, sliced
50g unsalted butter
4 large eggs, lightly beaten
450ml double cream
225ml milk
175g caster sugar
4 elderflower heads
For the Elderflower Fritters:
8 elderflower heads
Sunflower oil
115g plain flour
250ml cold sparkling mineral water
1 egg
Pinch of salt
Icing sugar
Inspect the elderflowers for any insects. Gently heat the milk and cream with the elderflower heads in a saucepan. Remove from the heat and leave to cool.
Slice the panettone and butter one side. Place butter side down in a baking dish. Repeat until all the panettone has been used.
Sieve the milk into a bowl. Add the beaten eggs, sugar and whisk. Pour over the panettone, sprinkle some granulated sugar on top and leave to stand for one hour.
Preheat the oven to 180C/Gas Mark 4. Place in a bain-marie and bake for one hour until golden.
To make the elderflower fritters, mix ingredients together to form a batter. Heat oil in a pan up to 180C. Holding the stalk end, dip the elderflower into the batter and carefully place into pan of hot oil. Leave until cooked to a golden colour.
Drain with a slotted spoon onto a kitchen towel. Place in bowl and sprinkle with icing sugar.
Serve with the bread and butter pudding and a dollop of ice cream.
All recipes courtesy of www.discoverunearthed.com