It gives me great pleasure to be writing this inaugural foraging blog as the newly-appointed Foraging Expert for The Outdoor Guide. What an honour! Not only do I hugely admire TOG for all the great work they do, but one of the main reasons I love foraging for wild food so much is that it gets me outside, it puts me back in touch with nature and I get to explore the vast green spaces we have on our doorsteps – I would like to think that by reading this, you are also a big fan of all of those wonderful things.
This is the passion that I try to convey to all the guests on my foraging workshops. In fact, it is the entire reason I have chosen this as a career. When my wife announced that we were expecting our first child seven years ago, we were living in London at the time and my job at the time required me to travel the world and work unsociable hours. There is no reality check quite like that second faint red line on a pregnancy test appearing and I knew instantly that things had to change.
Ever the supportive partner, I distinctly remember her insisting that I was to be a happy dad, free from the restrictive nature of my previous career and instead I was to look for a job doing something I would love. There was never any doubt in my mind what that was to be. After stumbling into a part-time forager role for a year or so, I decided I needed to operate independently and so in January 2020 (perfect timing!) I set up Forage Box. I am proud to say that Forage Box has evolved into a nationwide entity now, with many workshops being run by our incredible team of tutors across the country.
I am very lucky to be able to have turned my passionate hobby into a career and lifestyle, but where did it all start? Whilst you might expect that a full-time forager to have maybe been raised in the woods, foraging on a daily basis as part of a hairy hippie community, the reality is that I grew up in semi-detached suburbia. I have always played outdoors (you would have found me building treehouses and camping in the woods instead of locked in my bedroom on a games console) and I love food – foraging is just the obvious intersection on that Venn diagram!
Whilst my granny is a passionate mushroom forager and my parents can claim to be foodies – we would often pick bilberries or try our best to catch fish on holiday – it was only whilst working on a private estate in the gorgeous Cairngorms that the foraging fire in my belly was truly lit when properly introduced to foraging for wild mushrooms. I can recall the exact moment I was shown actual real-life porcini mushrooms growing right there in a UK forest and how exciting that was (and still is). I spent many summers exploring that estate, eagerly seeking that next bumper haul of chanterelle, porcini, charcoal burners and cauliflower fungus.
Fast-forward to now and you’ll still find me staring at the floor rather than the view, constantly scanning for the next exciting thing to pop up from the forest floor or burst from the hedgerow. I have honed my skills to a level with which I can teach now. Whilst my passion for wild food has never waned, it is now my responsibility to teach people how to not just safely forage for themselves, but to ensure they do it legally, sustainably and ethically – topics I plan to explore in future TOG blog posts.
What to forage this month
Taken from the Forage Box Foraging Calendar
Sea Aster – an underrated superstar of the salt mudflats that tastes like green olives
Mugwort – a warm alternative to sage that can be found on rough ground
Green Walnut – pick them young to pickle for a christmas cheeseboard
Hop Shoots – the world’s most expensive vegetable, available in a hedgerow near you!
Broom Flowers – beautiful garnishes with hints of coconut and pea pods
Dryads Saddle – an easy to ID edible mushroom that smells of watermelons
This month’s species in focus: Elderflowers
Whilst I think elderflowers get a little more attention than they deserve (and anything that can be found on a supermarket shelf has the shine taken off it for me), I will admit that I love certain elderflower drinks, especially a crisp glass of elderflower sparkling wine. I do get the odd batch given to me by more inexperienced foragers for troubleshooting purposes and the unpleasant flavour of their drink is usually caused by either adding too many elderflowers to the mix or, even worse, by adding something in there that isn’t elderflower at all – picking random blooms of white flowers (AKA umbels) could do anything from ruining your meal to ruining your life!
Habitat: mixed woodlands, hedgerows, waste ground
Description: Elder trees have a distinct ‘scruffy’ look to them that sometimes sees them weeded out of more manicured woodland spaces. The pale bark and wood are easily recognised in winter. In spring, compound leaves that have a musty aroma appear (they smell like hamster cages or pet shops to me) which are soon followed by the prized umbels of soft, white flowers.
Lookalikes: Proper care must be taken to not confuse other trees or plants with white flowers to elder. That could be something like a rowan tree that would make your beverage taste like earwax, or it could be Hemlock Water-Dropwort which would send you straight off to the morgue! Get familiar with the musty smell and ‘dirty’ look to the bark to stay safe.
Picking guide: Only the flowers and cooked berries are edible, so carefully pinching out the flowers from the lower branches is all you need to do. Store them in an airtight container to keep them fresh and use them as soon as you get home.
Cooking tips: Less is more! Elderflower drinks are best made with two or three ‘heads’ of flowers per litre only – any more than that and your brew will taste as the leaves smell.
Recipe: Elderflower fizz
As with all fermentation, it is best to use sterilised (or very clean) equipment. The trick to this slightly crude recipe is to harness the power of the yeast that naturally forms on your elderflowers. The results can vary but that is part of the fun!
Ingredients:
750g white sugar
Juice of a lemon or equivalent of white wine vinegar
6-8 heads of elderflowers, ideally picked on a dry day
2 litres of warm water
Equipment:
Large sterilised tub (enough to hold 2.5 litres of water ideally)
Plastic bottles – see note
Method:
- Dissolve your sugar in the water. You can do this either by having it boiling in the first place and allowing to cool or just by stirring like mad. Add the lemon juice or vinegar.
- Once at room temperature, place the elderflowers into the liquid and leave to stand for a couple of days or so. After this time is up, give it a taste with a clean spoon – this is now technically ready as a very simple soft drink, albeit not a sparkling one.
- Strain off the flowers and pour into your plastic bottles, leaving a good inch or two at the top of each before screwing on the caps tightly.
- Leave somewhere warm to ferment – a kitchen worktop is perfect. After a few days or so, the natural yeast will have consumed enough sugar to mean that your bottles have become pressurised. If you prefer a soft drink, drink your elderflower-ade now. It will be sweet and floral, as well as sparkling. If you prefer your fizz to be a bit more grown up, follow the next step.
- Allow your brew to ferment to the point you are happy with. If you want it to be slightly sweet, taste it occasionally and store in the fridge when you are happy – this will crash the fermentation and stop any further alcohol being produced. If you want it to be dry like champagne, prosecco or cava, ferment it until all of the sugar has gone – this will give you the higher ABV too as the yeast will have converted more sugar into alcohol.
A word on burping: once fermenting away nicely, you will need to tend this brew on a daily basis using a method charmingly called ‘burping’. Essentially, this involves gently letting out all of the built-up gas in the bottle before leaving it to ferment further. It is an important part of the process that will ensure you not redecorate your kitchen!
Glass vs plastic: it is tempting to go for glass bottles because they are pretty and store well. However, when using them for fermenting drinks, it can be a risky game. Glass does not give you much warning before a violent explosion (speaking from experience) but old plastic bottles that once contained soft drinks swell up and really tell you when the pressure is building inside them. I tend to squeeze mine when I burp them to give a bit more space to expand again, and then when the fermentation calms down to a gentle fizz, I pop them in the fridge ready for a sunny afternoon.
