How do you use wild produce!
Here are just a few ideas on how I use the food I forage, including many chefs great successes with wild produce from Foodswild.
For info on what is in season can be found in My Cornwall magazine, on the Foodswild blog
To see some of these recipies in action, why not come along to our next demo, show or foray. Details can be found by contacting us or calling Foodswild on 07988 796 743.
Vegetables:
Nettle
We all know this one, use as you would do spinach for soup, stuff pasta with it - or jazz it up with nettle beer.
Fat Hen
A prehistoric plant loved by our ancestors, and disliked by modern farmers, use as any green leaf, cook it down with a little butter, or use the young shoots in salads.
Sea Beet
A lovely edible close to the shore, this is the king of spinach, all beets come from this plant (beetroot) seriously packed with iron, with a heavenly silky texture.
Sea Purslane
A crispy silvery green crunchy leaf on the tide line, deep fry or blanche add butter and lemon.
Sea Cabbage
Amazing, more cabbage than cabbage! Try cooked in cider with few spuds add olive oil and a squeeze of lemon-awesome.
Watercress
Wow! The wild version is totally different, very peppery. You have to be aware of liver fluke, a dangerous liver eating worm.
Wintercress
Similar taste watercress, tho sweeter ,delicate and dainty leaves and white flowers for a fresh and tasty garnish. Natures micro herb. Lovely.
Garlic-Ramsons
Abundant plant, in some places taking over - use as garlic makes amazing pesto also use flower heads as hot capers, awesome.
Garlic
Three cornered, really a wild onion mainly in south west, tastes like a garlicky spring onion. Amazing flowers for top garnish.
Alexanders
Young stems peeled, blanched fried with butter plus sprinkle of sugar, lovely perfume taste hard to describe, but once you get a taste for them, youll be hooked.
Rock Samphire
Fragrant plant with a history but not to be overlooked. Blanched and fried with butter and lemon this really is something special. A very zesty special plant great as a pickle, also raw. Not to be confused with Marsh Samphire.
Marsh Samphire
We all know it! Asparagus of the sea say no more.
Pennywort
A succulent fat leaf best for garnish needs a dressing tastes like mild grass.
Chickweed
A great skin ointment when blitzed, also a lovely salad veg, do not eat too much or you will get nitrate poisoning.
Sorrel
Very tangy lemony leaf great in salads cook in earthenware pot to keep green it has oxalic acid so not too much.
Wood Sorrel
Very expensive but amazing taste that's a bit like apple skin. Looks like clover,
fantastic salad garnish, the tang is oxalic acid.
Jack by the Hedge (or hedge garlic)
A lovely salad leaf loves dressing also great stuffing for lamb, mild garlic taste.
Black Mustard
Wow! Leaf hot and sweet flowers like yellow baubles also hot, excellent garnish almost like horseradish.
Horseradish
We all know this you can use young leaves in salads but the roots are the best, need permission to dig up.
Ivy Toadflax
A small ivy on walls very bitter great in small salads.
Hawthorn
Leaf used for salad a nutty flavour one of the earliest green leaves in spring.
Meadow Sweet
Aspirin comes from this amazing plant. The flowers give a unique spice flavour, that upliftits the senses. Great for rice pud or ice cream. Leaves taste of cucumber.
Japanese Knot Weed
I sell this as cornish rhubarb; great in compots tastes of gooseberry/rhubarb, really. try it when 6 ins high.
Seaweeds
Mermaids hair
My daughter eats this raw, my wife eats it like spaghetti, and chefs blitz it in blinis really good.
Oarweed/kelp
Sea grass
Sea lettuce
Sea lettuce is lovely, here its wrapped around some monkfish, but put it with pork and its reall something.
Sawtooth wrack
Sargssum
Sugar kelp
Flowers
Gorse
Lovely bright yellow flower great for ice cream, banana and coconut
tones. Makes great wine.
Garlic Ramsons
Makes a great spicy hot garnish also use buds as capers.
Garlic Three Cornered
Taste of spring onion the best looking and tasting white flower probably the best for garnish.
Alexanders
Use as capers very aromatic, introduced by the romans.
Mustard
Bright yellow baubles hot, one of the best for garnish.
Elder
Fantastic cordial and wine also great for garnish, an amazing aroma springs from this flower.Gorgeous fritters with a little honey in the batter.
Hawthorn
Cordial or wine also garnish.
Meadow Sweet
The most evocative smell, i am addicted, you have to try this adored old world plant, ice cream, rice puds.
Fruit
Quince
Great marmalade, ices and confections a lovely pink syrup, add slices to meat when cooking, treat as apples. Poisonous seeds. Very very fragrant one fruit can fill a room like an old fashioned deodoriser. Makes fabulous vodka for Christmas cocktails.
Crab Apple
Try cooking with syrup for pork, a lovely jelly. Treat as a sour apple, makes gorgeous wine.
Elderberry
Makes a great sauce for liver (pontack) looks like blood! Jelly, pies, ice cream and many more.
Damsons
An ancient plum, lovely tart jelly, spiced chutneys or eaten straight off the tree, also great wine.
Sloe
Another ancient wild plum not to be eaten from the tree. Sloe gin, don't wait till first frost stick them in the freezer.