Exmoor Lockdown Diary 12 - Learning To Forage For Wild Food
Someone on the news just announced there will probably be another 13 weeks of coronavirus lockdown. Which will probably cause a few folk to question their food supplies among other things…
But if you live in the countryside you can always do a bit of foraging - which is what I was doing on a special course in Cornwall a couple of years ago… You can find food for free out in the wild - even in the most windswept and inhospitable spots imaginable.
That point was proved to me one wet and windy day when I joined a group of enthusiasts on a two hour foraging walk above the granite sea-cliffs of West Penwith. The north Cornish coast was doing its usual trick of repelling an angry Atlantic, but there among the crooks and crannies away from the sea-spume we managed to collect quite a haul of edible plants.
I hasten to add that we were able to do it under the tutelage of Caroline Davey, who has been foraging wild food as part of her Cornish based Fat Hen cookery school for the past 10 years.
At this point some people might shrug and imagine some unspeakably awful dishes being created out of the various hedgerow plants and seaweeds which grow in the salt-soaked hinterland of West Penwith. Nothing could be further from the truth…
Our walk was based at the much-celebrated Gurnard’s Head, a pub located between Zennor and St Just on the coast road that weaves its way west above the sea-cliffs and below the wild and empty West Penwith moors. And the head chef (it was Max Wilson back then, I don’t know if he’s still in the role) had prepared an amazing four course lunch from locally foraged ingredients which Caroline had delivered first thing that morning.
Each and every one of the dishes was stunning, starting with the miso-glazed mackerel and seaweed dashi - a soup so sensational that was the best thing I’ve eaten from a bowl in ages.
Then there was wood-pigeon breast with elderberries, blackberries, mustard leaf and port. Next came local caught hake served with chanterelles, wild cabbage pancetta and dulce seaweed. We rounded the lunch off with a fantastic crab apple and blackberry cake top with ginger caramel and served with clotted cream and wood sorrel.
This truly was a fine dining experience that brought the landscape right into the cosy confines of the pub.
But as we walked out towards the wave-lashed cape of Gurnard’s Head earlier I had a chat with Caroline, who’s been running her cookery school for the past 10 years. Having begun the stroll by showing us some poisonous plants growing in a stream, I thought it wise to ask how she had come to know so much about the finer points of edible botany.
“I worked as an ecological consultant for 11 years and learned how to identify plants,” Caroline replied. “I did a lot of botanical surveys, so learned about plants - and then I did a lot of studies on my own to learn more.
“Most of the plants you are going to find around the coastal fringe of the UK you will find here. Three cornered leeks, for example, started as a garden plant in Cornwall but you will even find it growing in London now - though it has taken a couple of hundred years to get there.
“More and more people are interested in foraging,” she went on. “Newspapers and magazines often pick up on it. And, in terms of bookings for my cookery courses, they are always increasing.
“There are some things you definitely must not eat! You don’t take any chances - you need to be able to 100 per cent identify anything you are going to eat.
“I’ve been doing these foraging events with the Gurnard’s Head for eight or nine years now - in fact, they were the first people I supplied wild food to back in 2007. And we’ve been running these foraging events most of the time since - although we just do one in spring and one in autumn now. And I do some other things for the sister hotel - The Old Coastguard, in Mousehole, as well.”
I had stayed at the Old Coastguard the night before and can vouch for the high quality of food served there. It is a glorious boutique hotel that has undergone a charming makeover in recent times.
But, far from its comfortable interiors, I was now out on the north coast as the wind blew and storm clouds threatened to drown our little party in a downpour of rain. So I asked Caroline why it was she thought people were keen to learn more about foraging for in the wild.
“It depends - most people intend to do a little bit of foraging when they go home. Others just like the experience, the walk and the food. People do come back and do other courses with me - it all depends on how committed someone is. You really need to want to do it to take it up properly.
“You can make delicious things - but only if you know what to do with it. That is the key. My cookery courses show people how to prepare these things so you can serve something delicious. We do the whole journey from soil to plate in one day, and have a big feast.”
After we’d picked various herbs, wild vegetables and fungi we returned to the Gurnard’s Head (having miraculously avoided the rain) and sat down to our grand lunch.
Afterwards I talked to head chef Max Wilson and asked how he had learned how to deal with wild foraged food…
“Some of the chefs I’ve worked with in the past have shown me things - I was introduced to it quite early on,” he replied. “Wild garlic would have been the first hedgerow thing I came across - that is the obvious one - it has a real country flavour. But I’ve always lived in the countryside and spend a lot of time out and about walking. And I have quite a few books a flick through. If I am absolutely sure something’s not going to kill me, I’ll have a go.
“A couple of chefs I’ve known have poisoned themselves with mushrooms. So I wouldn’t touch one for the restaurant unless I got it from a professional picker. I came across one this morning walking the dog and I am fairly sure it was a girolle mushroom - if I’d received it here from a professional, I’d have prepared them, but because it’s me finding it, I left it alone.”
We walked about the amazing Japanese style dashi he’d prepared as our starter.
“When you finish making the soup, you put the seaweed in at the end and the umami flavour is incredible,” said Max. “There’s plenty of (foraged) things that pack quite a punch like that - and that’s good because restaurant menus can get a bit ‘samey’ sometimes.
“So I think it’s great to poke about, because you know what flavour you’re after. Say you want to sharpen a dish up - you’ve got the wood sorrel, which is amazing stuff and it’s a little bit different.
“In a way you are bringing the landscape here into the kitchen and putting it onto someone’s plate. I take my inspiration from wherever I am working. When I am menu planning, I don’t do it in the kitchen - I can’t see the wood from the trees in there sometimes.
“So I go out on the coastal path and walk along - and that is where I’ll have most of my ideas for dishes. Then I’ll sit down in a pub somewhere and jot it all down - and that is how it works for me.”
And if it works for Max it certainly worked for me and my fellow diners.
To find our more visit www.gurnardshead.co.uk or www.oldcoastguardhotel.co.uk
