Finding Food: An Introduction to Foraging

Finding Food An Introduction to Foraging

Finding Food An Introduction to Foraging

Cod Haddock Scampi Plaice Fishcake Half-pounder Quarter-pounder Cheeseburger Bacon-burger Veggie-burger Chicken-burger Chicken-nuggets Turkeystick

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Sausage Jumbo-sausage Battered-sausage Veggie-sausage Savaloy Mushrooms Onion-rings Hot-Dog Pie Kebab Curry Cheese Cheese,Gravy

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Limpets ‘n’ Chips?

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The Fast Food and Supermarket era has made it all too easy to become disconnected from the source of our food The majority doesn’t even come from our own continent or country, and seasonal food seems to be disappearing.

This book aims to educate a little about the potential world of free food, and begins with a trip to the seaside.

Foraging represents a return to a natural order, gathering food and understanding how we connect with our environment. With a little knowledge and a keen eye, there is a banquet of food all around us just waiting for the taking.

Looking beyond the ordinary Fish ‘n’ Chips style cuisine, what else can the coastline offer us? Fish, Crabs, Lobsters, Mussels, Cockles, Shrimps, Limpets, Seaweed…

The coast is a larder in waiting.

In the first part of this book, a step by step recipe for limpets in white wine sauce. We’ll show you each step, from gathering limpets, identifying seaweed and preparing the meal.

In the second part, an in depth interview with foraging expert, Fraser Christian; his opinions on supermarket food, our throwaway culture and the importance of reconnecting with our roots

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Heading to the seaside...

You will need: Foraging Stick

Choosing a good stick is essential, a strong piece of wood will not only aid you climbing across the rock pools, but is a nifty way of knocking the limpets off the rocks

Penknife

A penknife is duel purpose, scooping out the limpets from their shells, and cutting tough seaweed

Bag / Plastic bottle

Finding a discarded plastic bottle is ideal, cut off the top and use the otherwise wasted bottle to store your limpets and seaweed

Step 1 Finding your limpets shouldn’t be difficult, they live in groups on each rock and will always be varying in size.

Limpets change gender as they grow, and so a variety of sizes is essential to their community.

Bear this in mind when selecting your limpets, the larger is obviously the better for your meal but removing all the largest limpets from one rock will mean they are unable to reproduce and may die off as a result. Take just a couple and then move on to your next spot. If you find any having already fallen off the rock, do not take them as they have probably already died and are likely to make you very ill.

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Step 2 Removing the limpets can be tricky, ever tried to pull or kick them off when you were a kid? A limpet is perfectly designed to cling hard on to the rock face, to stop it being washed away by the ocean. It does this by detecting vibrations in the rock and tightening its grip.

Disturb the rock it sits upon and the limpet will think the ocean is sweeping in and tighten its grip.

Instead, sneak up on the limpet and strike its side in one quick swift movement. It’ll pop off with no trouble.

Step 3 Cutting away the shell can be a slightly squeamish process, but do it quickly and it’ll be over painlessly for the limpet. Take your penknife and slide it along the side of the limpet, scoop all the way around and it’ll pop out easily. Discard (or collect!) the shell and store your limpet in the bottle.

Step 4 Green or red seaweed can be easily found and makes a lovely accompaniment to your collection of limpets.

Simply find yourself a healthy amount growing from a rock and with your penknife cut no more than half the plant away, making sure to leave the roots.

This will ensure the plant continues to grow and your supply of food will be sustainable, able to feed you again and again. Throw the seaweed in with your limpets and it’s time to leave the beach.

Step 5 Did you know nettles contain up to five times more Vitamin C than oranges? If you can find any on your walk back from the beach then wearing a glove, or using your jumper, cut off the top third of the nettle plant (to avoid the likelihood of dog’s business…) and carefully shove it in with everything else.

We’re now ready to start cooking!

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Limpets in a White Wine sauce Ingredients

Serves 4 people

Foraged ingredients:

Additional ingredients:

About 40 or so limpets 4 handfuls of mixed seaweed 2 handfuls of nettles

Puff pastry 8-10 medium sized potatoes Single cream White wine Rosemary and Thyme 1 onion 4 garlic clove Olive oil

Preparation Nettles

White Wine Sauce

Wash nettles in boiling water (this will kill the plant, taking away the sting, and simultaneously wash away bugs etc)

In a pot, mix together on medium heat: 2 part single cream to 1 parts white wine Half a diced onion Half clove garlic Add Rosemary and Thyme to taste

Limpets Lay out your limpets on a chopping board, and cut away the black parts (the guts etc) The closer to orange the better, any looking grey are likely to be unhealthy or old, use your judgement and throw away any you don’t fancy eating Wash out thoroughly

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Hassle–back Potatoes Using a sharp knife, cut a dozen or so vertical slits in the potatoes and fill with thinly cut garlic slices

Puff Pastry Cut into four square parcels ready for filling

Cooking Pre-heat oven to 200°C Bring two hobs to boil Cover potatoes with olive oil, surrounded by remaining sliced onions, add herbs to flavour and cook in centre of oven for 30-40 minutes In separate hobs: Boil Nettles for 15 minutes Boil Seaweed for 15 minutes Add limpets to white wine sauce and simmer just below boiling for 20 minutes Drain Seaweed and fill into puff pastry parcels, place in oven with potatoes for 20 minutes

Per Serving: 2 hassle­–back potatoes with roast onions Seaweed puff pastry Boiled Nettles side Limpets in White Wine sauce

Recommended Wine: Chenin Blanc Sauvignon Blanc Italian Vermentino

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An Interview With

FRASER CHRISTIAN Foraging & Survival expert

Revealing the inspiration behind the recipe, we caught up with wild-food expert Fraser Christian to take part on a coastal foraging course, pick his mind on nature, our relationship with food and the state of the nation.

Why forage? What first drew you to the great outdoors?

I’ve always been curious about things, wanting to know whats around the corner, how things work, where things come from.

As a kid I was in the Scouts, the cubs and that. I just followed that on really, always hiking, always camping, fishing, hunting and

exploring. I went to college in Bristol to do cooking, I trained as a chef, and this combined with my love of the outdoors, a real interest in where food comes from, eating real food and really connecting with it. Foraging relates to one of our base instincts, our huntergatherer instinct, to know where our food has come from and being fully engaged in cooking it and finding it and knowing how the food benefits us. Theres too much now to allow us to be so far removed from our food now, all these Crispy Creme McDonalds bollocks, its poison we’re putting into our body and foraging is a step toward really knowing what we’re eating again.

How has the role of foraging changed in the past hundred years? Is it a dying art?

The big change came with the industrial revolution, and even more so with the NHS. People lost touch with wild food and how it can be used as medicine.

Wild food is in fact medicine, before the industrial revolution we were constantly taking in all these plants and herbs which we’d evolved with, because they were good for us, and they had for hundreds of years kept us here and kept us alive. With the NHS and modern medicine no room is made for preventative medicine.

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If it’s not Double, Triple, Pre-Packaged, Vacuum Sealed from Tesco, then you can’t eat it.

Even up until the second world war, there was still a lot of knowledge about wild foods, people supplementing their food and medicines, but now its seen as a sort of extreme or specialist art. Yet who hasn’t ever been out picking blackberries? Theres a division in people’s perceptions for some reason about wild food, like if its not double triple pre-packaged vacuum sealed and from Tesco then you can’t eat it.

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Years ago we were a lot more in tune with what was in season so we would go and pick fruits.

Whereas now we have Goji berries from Africa, we’ve got blueberries from the rocky mountains in Canada, we’ve got no seasons anymore so foraging and wild food seems to have lost its place.

Hopefully it’ll go full circle again soon and as transport costs start going up and becoming a real economic issue, local and seasonal produce will start to come to the

forefront and wild food will be included in that.

Is our relationship with food an indicator of a more individualistic outlook?

We all want 2 cars on the driveway and we all want a semi-detached house don’t we? Everyone wants to live that illusion thats fed through their televisions thats piped into their magazines, these wonderful lives that people have,

these celebrities. You hear about celebrities having massive drug problems and mental health issues and surely people would think “oh, being famous isn’t what its all about,” But someone did a survey recently where they asked 100 schoolkids what they wanted to be and 75% of them said they wanted to be famous, they asked what for, they said “no, i just wanna be famous”. This greed and fame.

Its really being sold to us right now this whole illusion, and as we fall

further into it we grab more greed, we grab more money. You cant buy everything these days can you?

Success is gauged by how much money you have and what you can buy. Its not for me, luckily, but then I don’t work 45 hours a week for a corporation that supports the degradation of nature.

That saying “money cant buy you happiness” well its true unfortunately, one of the most depressed people I ever met must

have had £6m in a personal bank account, not even in property, and he’s the most depressed person I’ve ever met. So many of the laws are set to protect rich people. You may say the recessions over now, but you go up to Aston Villa or north of Birmingham, people are being evicted and living below the poverty line. Especially when it comes to food, the food that those people can afford to buy should be classed as poison, its really bad and their kids are eating poison.

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Even if they think they’re buying fresh vegetables, the vegetables they buy are so mass produced that they’re devoid of virtually all nutrients.

They say an apple a day keeps the doctor away, well they probably did when they were wild or organically grown apples, but now I wouldn’t be surprised if an apple a day didn’t put you towards seeing a doctor, all the residual pesticides and waxes contained on it you know. The worlds just gone crazy.

Do you think the recession will lead to an increased interest in wild food?

I think so yeah, I definitely think so, because… Well, not your average working class person because they haven’t got the time to afford an opinion. How can poor people suddenly go foraging if they gotta do 2 split shifts, a night shift and the kids are at the creche you know? I hope so, I hope foraging gets more popular but it’d have to take massive public opinion to sway any decisions that the government would make regarding its use. It boils down to greed and wealth, and theres simply no money in it. Its free, foraging is free food, so its never going to coincide with our ‘so-called democracy’ its just never going to work.

What kinds of people are attracted to your courses?

Is there a key demographic?

Its a complete cross-section, I like to think that because I run the courses at the minimum possible price that I do get a wide range of people. I try and make it accessible to everyone, because it feeds into the idea of sustainability.

Sustainability should also mean an accessibility in price, there are lots of groups doing things similar to me, and are popularising on things like River Cottage, Bear Grylls, Ray Mears and that.

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But they’re not accessible to most people, one company I used to work for would charge £225 a day for an individual, now my mum doesn’t earn that in a week, it’s more than the average weekly wage.

It’s like organic products are great, but they’re a brand in themselves and they’re not necessarily accessible. Don’t buy ‘Prince Charles Blackberry Sauce’ go out with his empty jam jar that you’ve got from the recycling centre and fill it yourself! This is what we need to do, because anything that’s been through a process isn’t going to be as fresh as if you go and get it yourself. And interact, you know, it’s more than just eating stuff, it’s touching it, its interacting its creating a relationship with your body and what you’re consuming.

It’s not as simple as someone saying ‘I can give you the best food’ you need to understand the food, engage with the food for it to be beneficial to you.

Have people lost faith in food?

I don’t think so, but it’s going back to being able to afford to have an opinion, and supermarkets are the only places open after half past 5, when do working class people ever get to go to the farmer’s market on a wednesday?

Unfortunately all this wild food and foraging is often for the affluent, and the middle classes. Which is why I do let people do the courses for free, because I feel I have a responsibility to spread on this information.

Most people, I’m sorry to say this, don’t give a shit about other people, I cant think of any nicer way to say it but they don’t. And thats because we’ve all been told that were different, he’s different to me, he’s a different colour, a different culture. Its always being demonstrated that we’re different,

Sustainability Should Also Mean an Accessibility In Price

but we all bleed red blood don’t we? I think if you’re lucky enough to be from the bottom of the pile, coming from the bottom as a working class person you’re always looking up. You can gauge other people, but it’s very hard for someone who’s upper class and who’s never been in your situation to fully see the world through your eyes. So that creates a segregation in our society.

Im a great believer in teams, I dont believe any mans an island. You cant survive on your own, we used to survive in tribes everyone with different skills and that’s what’s been broken down. First of all they broke down tribalism and then they broke down families. There was the great recession when I left school, and there was a lot of people migrating from up north down to the southern regions for work and as a result their families have been smashed apart, all for work.

It’s a sickness inside of society really, because if they smash apart families and they smash apart tribalism then we’ve got no unity, and we only believe what we read or what’s shown to us on television.

We’re taking our opinions from the media, rather than talking and engaging with our elders and learning from them and feeling a sense of community.

Do you ever shop at supermarkets?

I still go there for oats, porridge oats for my dogs.

You’d never catch me buying fish, but sometimes onions. Luckily, the reason I live here [Lyme Regis] is because its a sustainable area, theres lots of wild food and food producers. I’m very lucky, I have friends who are organic and free range producers, so with very little effort it’s easy for me to find

local produce. It is a discipline to become self-sustianble, and I’m starting to get away from the way I was brought up, relying on all these shops and that and I’m starting to gather my own food more and more. Like this year was the first year I gathered a lot of elderflowers and made my own cordial. But then I ran out so then I gotta go and buy it, and it’s over £10 for a tiny bottle!

As a single person, living on my own, it is very difficult, we’re not supposed to live on our own. Whereas before you’d have someone collecting the nuts, this’d be there that’d be there so it’d be a lot easier to live off the wild food, even if there were shops. You cant do everything yourself, you cant expect to go out to work, to come home, skin a deer, and have chance to cook it, and it to be cooked before one o clock in the morning.

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It’d be great if we could go back to the way we’re supposed to live, living off the land, collecting our own wood, food and water giving real, tangible purpose to our day.

Whereas now we come into work, we pay for a cleaner, we pay for someone to grow our food, we pay for someone to give us our water.

We’re not actually any better off.

In fact we’re worse off because what we’re getting isn’t half as good as if we’d collected our own water and food. The wood you buy at a garage is unseasoned pine you know? Everything is just a poor substitute for what we would do ourselves.

What would you recommend for people living in big cities?

I’d encourage people to grow their own food. When I was in Bristol I lived in a tiny house in Easton,

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we didn’t really have a garden so I used to put window boxes out on the windows, we had sloping roofs, so I used to put all my cucumbers and tomatoes on the sloping roofs. I’ve always grown my own food, especially in the city. It’s an argument that’s used quite a lot, it’s okay for you because you live down there by the sea, well no, you can grow your own food even in an inner city flat.

Supermarkets are ridiculous, I lived in an urban situation where we used to take all the food out their bins continuously, and some people used to pour bleach over it so you couldn’t have it. What would happen if everyone was on free food? It devalues their product doesn’t it? You’re not going to go buy a product in date if you can get one free out of date. I try and get all my opinions from common

sense, and it’s common sense that we shouldn’t be throwing food in the bin when there are people living below the poverty line in this country. We just shouldn’t be throwing food away.

The scariest thing about big cities is how dependant the whole system is on outside food. If all our transport routes were suddenly blocked off, and food couldn’t be brought into the city, everyone would starve, it’d be total chaos.

In theory, London is only 48 hours away from starvation

Fraser runs a wide variety of courses, from fishing to cooking and coastal survival. Three of his recipes are shown overleaf >> For more info see his website: www.fraserchristian.com www. wildforage.co.uk

UNDERSTAND

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TRULY 23

It’d be great if we could go back to the way we’re supposed to live, living off the land, collecting our own wood, food and water giving real, tangible purpose to our day.

Whereas now we come into work, we pay for a cleaner, we pay for someone to grow our food, we pay for someone to give us our water.

We’re not actually any better off.

In fact we’re worse off because what we’re getting isn’t half as good as if we’d collected our own water and food. The wood you buy at a garage is unseasoned pine you know? Everything is just a poor substitute for what we would do ourselves.

What would you recommend for people living in big cities?

I’d encourage people to grow their own food. When I was in Bristol I lived in a tiny house in Easton,

we didn’t really have a garden so sense, and it’s common sense I used to put window boxes out on that we shouldn’t be throwing food the windows, we had sloping roofs, in the bin when there are people so I used to put all my cucumbers living below the poverty line in and tomatoes on the sloping this country. We just shouldn’t be roofs. I’ve always grown my own throwing food away. food, especially in the city. It’s an argument that’s used quite a lot, The scariest thing about big cities Seaweed Risotto it’s okay for you because you live is how dependant the whole down there by the sea, well2/3 no,people you system is on outside food. If all our Serves can grow your own food even in an transport routes were suddenly inner city flat. blocked off, and food couldn’t be Prep time: 10 minutes brought into the city, everyone Cook time: 35 minutes Supermarkets are ridiculous, I would starve, it’d be total chaos. lived in an urban situation where theory, London is only 48 hours 250 grams of fresh In mixed we used to take all seaweeds the food out away from starvation washed and sliced. their bins continuously, (cut and kelpsome in very fine slices) people used to pour250 bleach over grams of risottoFraser rice runs a wide variety of it so you couldn’t have it. What courses,stock from fishing to cooking Approx 2 pints of vegetable would happen if everyone was on and coastal survival. Three of his 1 large onion finely diced. free food? It devalues their product recipes are shown overleaf >> 2 Sticks of celery finely diced doesn’t it? You’re not going to 2 cloves of go garlic crushed and chopped buy a product in date if youspoons can of olive Foroil more info see his website: 3 table get one free out of date.

I try and www.fraserchristian.com A good glass of white wine. get all my opinions Pinch from common www. wildforage.co.uk of cayenne pepper Sea salt and black pepper to taste. (check when cooked as seaweed is already salty) 2 oz of freshly grated Parmesan cheese (optional) Lemon wedges

Fraser’s Wild Food Recipes

Add olive oil to a pre heated heavy bottomed pan with the finely chopped onion and celery, frying gently until soft Add the garlic, and rice, turning and stirring to coat each grain thoroughly (almost frying it) turn up the heat slightly and add the white wine Reducing it slightly before adding approx a third of the hot vegetable stock and the tougher seaweed, such as the kelp Add stock as required, turning steadily from the bottom of the pan, until the rice starts to realise it’s creamy starches. Add the finer textured seaweeds such as Dulse and more stock as required until the rice is nearly soft, it should still have a slight nutty texture at this stage, or what is know as “to the bite” Remove from the heat and add the really delicate seaweed such as the sea lettuce, stir over and carefully add the Parmesan cheese and the cayenne pepper, taste, check seasoning and serve in warm bowls with a wedge of lemon to brighten it up.

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Dandelion Wine 8 pints of flower heads (no stalks) 8 pints of water 3.5 lb. of sugar 1 lemon 1 orange Yeast

Bring the flowers to the boil in water and simmer for 1 minute.

Strain onto the sugar and thinly chopped rind of lemon and orange, when lukewarm add the juice of the fruit, and the activated yeast.

Cover with a clean cloth and leave in a warm spot for 2 days, before transferring to a fermentation container with an air lock.

After 2 days syphon wine into clean and sealed bottles for storage.

WITH your

FOOD

Limpet Soup Serves 3/4 people Prep time: 15 minutes Cook time: 25 minutes 12 large Limpets 1 large potato (washed and diced small) 4 sticks of Celery (washed and sliced thinly) 1 large onion (peeled and diced small) 2 cloves of garlic (peeled and pulped) 1.5 pints of fish, or vegetable stock 1 table spoon of olive oil 1 tea spoon of white pepper Sea salt to taste Chopped parsley to garnish

In olive oil, gently fry the onions, pepper, celery and limpets for 5 mins on moderate heat.

Add the stock and potato, gently simmering for 15/20mins, then season to taste and serve in warm bowls.

Liquidise for a smooth soup, or serve with ingredients finely cut and diced in a rustic chunky fashion, with a good sprinkle of freshly chopped parsley to garnish - delicious and warming!

BENEFIT you

TRULY 25

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