A British feast from garden weeds
Jessica Vincent, 8 May 2020
Excerpts: "It was an unusually hot April morning in Colchester, England, and the fields, now in full bloom, were bursting in brilliant yellows, whites and purples. Armed with a wicker basket and David Squire’s book Foraging for Wild Foods, I scanned the Essex countryside for the ingredients to my first-ever foraging taster menu: stinging #nettle soup; gnocchi with #dandelion leaf pesto; #WildGarlic and stinging nettle ravioli; and, for dessert, dandelion flower cookies.
[...]
"The earliest memory I have of #foraging is picking wild #blackberries with my grandmother. Our quest for England’s sweetest wild fruit led us to our local park in Banstead, Surrey, a small patch of green which, between August and October, would burst with swollen blackberries. Under strict instructions, I’d carefully manoeuvre my way around the thick, sharp brambles, my eyes scanning for the darkest and shiniest berries of them all. My grandmother had learned from her mother – who, as a young evacuee during World War Two, would forage wild fruits and plants as a supplement to the meagre food rations – that the plumper, darker berries were the sweetest. Those juicy crimson-purple morsels would often be turned into blackberry crumble, the perfect sweet finish to a Sunday roast dinner."
https://www.bbc.com/travel/article/20200507-foods-you-can-forage-from-your-own-garden
Derry Moore
