London: Pop out for a bite to eat
Foraging - it's the new foodie buzzword. Instead of buying food, pop into the woods, gather a few free ingredients and knock up a traditional dish. If customers like your hot-pot, they'll love a nice rosehip jus and nettle salad to go with your wild weasel rissoles.
In Cornwall, for example, the St Austell Brewery-owned Pescadou restaurant in Padstow works with a local forager to enable it to use wild ingredients such as rock samphire and thongweed - the latter going very nicely with tagliatelle, we're told.
The natural response to all this of any London-based pub chef will be 'balderdash' or a similar expletive. Foraging is all very well for the country boys, but in the Big City the best you're likely to come back with is a handful of limp dandelion leaves smelling faintly of cat wee.
Not so. At least, not according to the chaps at the London Forager (www.londonforager.com). Outdoor types who refuse to let a little thing like living in a concrete jungle curb their hunter/gatherer instincts, this group of food fans have been scouring London for wild food. Sites such as Hampstead Heath, Blackheath and Walthamstow Marshes have been 'mapped' by the foragers, but there are still plenty of commons, woods and open spaces across the capital waiting to be discovered.
Pubs with gardens should also look closer to home. There was a time when any decent inn had its own kitchen garden and fruit trees, and the remnants may still be lurking in corners of the pub garden. In fact, the recipe for elderflower champagne on the London Forager website uses flowers picked from a pub garden.
What to pick
Wild herbs such as mint, fruits including plums, crab apples and blackberries, and delicacies such as chestnuts and mushrooms, all grow fairly extensively in London. Beyond the more obvious, there are plenty of other delicacies growing wild on London pubs' doorsteps:
- Nettles are found all over London. Pick them in early spring when they are light green and skinny. Use gloves or plastic bags to avoid being stung. Try making a nettle soup - or a nettle beer
- Lime leaves: not to be confused with its citrus namesake, the lime tree has been planted along residential roads for hundreds of years. The young leaves go well in spring salads
- Dandelion flowers - the yellow heads of dandelions need to be cooked within a few hours of picking. Try the recipe for dandelion bhajis on the London Forager website
- Wild garlic: Often called ransoms, wild garlic can be used to flavour dips, mash, roasts, stews and soups, or eaten raw in a salad
- Borage: The leaves of this plant are considered essential ingredients in a Pimm's by true aficionados of the posh people's tipple
- Elderflower: A traditional British drink flavour, try making elderflower champagne with the heads of the flower.
If you're not sure what you're looking for, Welsh forager Judy of the Woods has created a downloadable foraging guide, available on her website at www.judyofthewoods.net
• Thanks to London Forager for info. For recipes go to London Forager website
