Foraging in October: Wild Edibles
📗 Let's explore more wonderful foraging tips from "The Edible City: A Year of Wild Food" book by John Rensten. Here's a quick reminder who John is. He's an author, Forage London founder and frustrated middle aged rock climber. He lived, worked and foraged in London for 20 years before finally escaping to Dorset, via Hampshire, in 2016 to concentrate on mushroom hunting and coastal foraging. Despite now living in a more rural part of the county, he still runs and organise numerous urban foraging events, wild food walks and mushroom forays.
So shall we have a look what John recommend to focus on in October?
Here we go:
- Pied De Mouton (Hydnum repandum)
- Wood Avens (Geum urbanum)
- Dog Rose (Rosa canina)
- Common Sorrel (Rumex acetosella)
- Procumbent Yellow Sorrel (Oxalis corniculata)
Let's start with Pied De Mouton;
(Hydnum repandum)
Parts used: ✅ Entire fruiting body, i.e. the crop, stems and spines
Harvesting tip: 🍄 Handle these gently to avoid crumbling.
🍄 John's advice to to any novice fungi fancier, go hunting with someone you have 100 per cent faith in and who has a proven track record... small mistakes can lead to horrific results.
☢️ A word of caution here: Mushrooms are excellent at absorbing pollutants so it's generally accepted that picking them close to busy roads is a bad idea (plus no one wants to get run over for a handful of fungi). John doesn't eat or recommend that anyone eats any city fungi; the underground organism that creates the mushrooms, mycelium, is excellent at absorbing any and all toxicity it encounters. He also recommends totally avoiding graveyards, where there are likely to be arsenic, lead and numerous other dangerous substances.
🥘 Pan-fried wild mushroom risotto cakes
(Recipe courtesy of Garry Eveleigh, aka The Wild Cook)
2-3 shallots, 2-3 garlic cloves, olive oil, butter, fresh herbs, 1kg assorted wild mushrooms, 250g risotto rice, 1 large glass of white wine, 850ml vegetable or chicken stock, salt and pepper.
Makes 8 cakes
Peel finely chop and sweat down the shallots and garlic in olive oil and butter for 2 minutes, add the fresh herbs and the roughly chopped wild mushrooms. Cook for a further 2 minutes, then add the risotto rice, stirring it to soak up the delicious juices and oil. Add the wine and keep stirring until it evaporates, then a ladleful of warmed stock every couple of minutes or so as the risotto gets sticky.
Keep stirring and after about 20 minutes stop adding stock (you need the risotto sticky to bind together). Stir in a large dollop of butter and season to taste.
Leave it to cool. Line a flat tray with greaseproof paper, place stainless-steel rings (about 8-10cm wide and 2.5cm or so deep) on the tray and pack tightly with the risotto mixture. Fill as many as you need before carefully removing the ring and setting the cakes in the fridge overnight.
Heat a large frying pan with olive oil and butter and add crushed garlic to flavour the oil before pan-frying your cakes until they are golden brown on both sides.
Wood Avens; (Geum urbanum)
Parts used: ✅ Leaves, roots (lots of long slender roots that smell of cloves)
Harvesting tip: 💡 Once the root has been dug, turn over the soil and pat down the earth to allow new seeds to grow.
🌹 This is a member of the Rose family, resembling a strawberry leaf, more rounded and far hairier, it's the roots, not the upper parts of the plant, that have a wonderful nutmeg, cinnamon and clove flavour. This is very common little plant. You'll need the landowner's permission if you'd like to dig it up. You can check your garden, I'm sure you'll find some clove root there. Another tip how to easily identify this common beauty; the seeds are in the form of a burr which you have probably found attached to your
🐕 trousers, socks and dog after a woodland walk.
It's the finer lower fronds of this root that contain the flavour, not the tough woody bit that join the foliage. I found out there's more than plenty of Wood Avens in my garden. Yay!
🍃 The leaves when young can be added to salads or stews or deep fried where they puff up a bit like prawn crackers.
The root is best picked, washed and used fresh but can be dried to store for later use, it loses some of its intensity but still strong enough for use.
You can try Wild Spice Latte recipe below
Dog Rose; (Rosa canina)
Parts used: ✅ Flowers, fruit
Harvesting tip: 💡 Use scissors and watch out for thorns.
🌹 Rose hips contain twenty times the vitamin C of oranges, masses of pectin (commonly used in throat lozenges), high levels of antioxidants, beta-carotene, vitamin B and essential fatty acids, and let's not forthe the fact they taste fantastic.
Rose hips also freeze very well.
Traditional wild rose vinegar
Rose hips, white wine vinegar or white balsamic vinegar, sugar (optional)
Pick bright red hips, ripe but still firm, then top and tail them with a sharp knife before sticking lots of little holes in them with a pin. Be sure not to cause any damage that will let the little hairs from the centre escape. Alternatively, you can freeze and defrost the hips to soften them.
🏺 Find an attractive clear glass bottle or jar, fill it with hips, then fill the remaining space with white wine vinegar or, if you're feeling lavish, white balsamic. For a sweet version, heat the vinegar and add a heaped tablespoon or two of sugar to every 100ml of liquid, then leave it to cool before adding it to the hips. About 6-8 weeks later it's ready to use, and in the meantime make sure you leave it sitting around where people can admire your creativity.
Have you ever wondered how to eat rosehips on your winter walk?
Check this little tip below
👇👇👇
Common Sorrel; (Rumex acetosella)
Parts used: ✅ Leaves
Harvesting tip: 💡 Hold the leaves by the top and shake them to remove any grass.
✂️ For safe identification or, more specifically, to distinguish it from a toxic plant called lords and ladies (Arum maculatum), make sure the two points that make up the bottom tips of the leaf are exactly that: points, tapering sharply, as if they have been cut with scissors, rather than gently rounded off.
🍋 Sorrel has multiple uses in the kitchen (tasting as it does, like lemon) and is obviously the perfect ingredient in any seafood dish. You could also try creamed sorrel with poached eggs or or consider adding it to a traditional Turkish lentil soup or mixing into a pea and parmesan risotto.
🍀 Common sorrel and the unrelated wood sorrel (often referred to as oxalis) are almost identical in taste and are interchangeable in culinary terms, althought the latter looks more like a species of clover (see picture below).
Procumbent Yellow Sorrel; (Oxalis corniculata)
Parts used: ✅ Leaves, flowers
Anyone fancy making French Wood Sorrel Soup?
👩🍳 Who said that cooking is boring? Check this funny video below.
I hope it inspires you.🥰 Happy foraging! 🍂🚶♀️🚶♂️
From my heart ❤️ to your heart.❤️
