Elderflower: Blooming in June, drunk in wines and cordials
Wild food
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By Miranda Gavin
Posted: Wed May 24 2006 -
Forget shops, London is a larder of free grub. From elderflowers to ash keys, the city‘s parks and gardens abound with finds for the food forager.
Like wrestling on ITV, foraging was originally a ’70s thing. Richard Mabey’s cult book ‘Food for Free’ first hit London in 1972, at the same time as lentils, Neal’s Yard and growing suspicion of processed and factory-farmed food. But it was Roger Phillips, in ‘Wild Food’ in 1986 who, using full-page colour photographs of British plants and fungi alongside al fresco recipes, introduced us to the culinary delights of ceps, nettles and rocket and showedhow a bounty could be found by combing London’s gardens, parks and railway embankments.
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Now foraged food is back on the menus of many top London restaurants, including The Ivy, Lindsay House, and Fifteen. Meanwhile, TV programmes such as BBC1’s ‘Full on Food’ and the escapades of Hugh Fearnley-Whittingstall have uncovered the weird and wonderful food growing all around us, even in the city.
Canterbury-based Fergus Drennan, a professional forager who has his own company, Wild Man Wild Food, and who has been foraging for about 15 years, says ‘Foraging is not a new or original activity but one of the earliest skills learnt by our ancient ancestors as they rose to the challenge of survival.’ He values its therapeutic qualities and believes that ‘in a fast-paced world, the slow gathering and consumption of wild food can counteract our obsessive hyperactivity and really give us plenty of food for thought.’
Drennan began collecting commercially a couple of years ago and has supplied The Ivy and Jamie Oliver’s Fifteen, but is concerned that London restaurants’ increasing demand for wild produce is unsustainable. Less scrupulous foragers have over-exploited wild mushrooms, for example, and new regulations and licence schemes have been introduced in some London spaces to halt picking for profit.
If you fancy foraging, it’s important to read the relevant by-laws, get permission, if necessary, and use your common sense. There’s a world of difference between harvesting for personal as opposed to commercial consumption. ‘Foraging that respects and seeks to nurture the environment, that works with nature and not against her must be, by its very nature, local, small-scale and delightfully slow,’ says Drennan.
Foraging requires patience, a keen eye and curiosity. In fact, there’s an art to it. When London-based Andy Overall, co-founder of the Fungi To Be With mushroom club and foray leader, discovered mushrooms growing in his north London back garden in the early ’90s, he drew off previous knowledge gleaned from a love of nature. He picked, identified and then fried the horse mushrooms with garlic and butter, and never looked back. Now working on a book about urban fungi, Andy runs spring and autumn forays and workshops to share his passion. The secret to success is using good identification books, cross-referencing photographs with illustrations to get a positive ID, and putting in the time and effort.
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