Foraging on Telegraph Hill

Some photos from the food foraging session I led for Grow Wild, as part of the Telegraph Hill festival.

Despite bitterly cold weather, we had a huge turnout of 30+ local residents all keen to forage for wild greens. 

Touring around St Catherine's Church and the two parks, we gathered lots of three-cornered leek, nettles, and chickweed. We also identified plantain and hawthorne, and we took note of plums, cherries and sloes for harvesting later in the year.  

After foraging, we took our findings back to the Common Growth garden where Louise from Grow Wild cooked up some wild nettle soup (amongst other things!) to share with the group.

Nettle is really traditional at this time of year, it's a great tonic for the blood which helps to clear out all the toxins that build up during the winter months when we tend to eat more animal fats (meat, dairy) and exercise less. It's also packed with vitamins and minerals! 

The soup was delicious. It was a really rewarding day all round, and I'd love to do it again later in the year! 

Lunch at the Cowley Club

...I cooked at the Cowley Club for the first time today, which was fun. Thanks go to Ryan and Rob for their practical help, and Sammy for her moral support.

The cook went well, we had a fairly tasty(!) vegan korma with rice and salads. Turnout wasn't brilliant, but a few friends turned up on top of the usual Cowley lunchtime crowd.

I'm hoping to do it again in future, with help from some more Faerie friends - and probably on a Friday (which should draw out a few more punters!)

'Cookability'

For the past few weeks I've been attending the Cookability course, run by Brighton & Hove Food Partnership. It's designed to support food activists to deliver cooking courses of their own, out in the community.

It's been great fun, with some really interesting people. We've been working together week-after-week to build up our group-working skills, develop knowledge around healthy eating & nutrition, and practice our food-prep by cooking lunch together.

This week was 'fish week', and I took the chance to demonstrate a recipe in front of the group - Smoked Mackerel Pate. It's a great recipe: a really simple prep, it's cheap, it keeps well, and of course the mackerel is a good source of protein and omega fatty acids (as well as being a relatively sustainable fish).

The finished dish tastes like a posh, richer version of tuna mayo. Which can't be a bad thing! :)

Half a packet (150g) cream cheese - can use quark or other low-fat version
Packet (250g) of smoked mackerel
A generous spoonful of yogurt, sour cream or creme fraiche
Lemon, pepper, chopped herbs etc. for flavouring

Remove the mackerel flesh from the skin, and remove any major bones. Blend the cream cheese and yogurt (etc.) into the flesh, and season with the lemon, pepper etc.

That's it! Can be kept in the fridge for several days, and you can flavour batches with additions like sweetcorn, sweet chilli, wasabi, and so on.

A photo of the group cooking lunch together...

...and the finished article, including a Palestinian-style stuffed trout:

Delicious! :)

Sunday 10th March

I've been booked by Louise of Grow Wild to lead another foraging walk around Telegraph Hill.

Louise is the Food Activities Coordinator for Grow Wild - she runs the popular Souper Sunday events at Common Growth. So, I'm hoping she can help us set up a field kitchen, and our foraged Telegraph Hill produce can be used to prepare an exciting wild lunch.

Watch this space for more details!

Food-shopping in Amsterdam



...with my sister, Lindsay. We spent a lovely morning with friends, savouring home-made apple tart with lashings of whipped cream and strong Dutch coffee (thank you, Wolf!). Then we strolled around the famous Noordermarkt organic food market - every Saturday, come rain or shine (or heavy snow!!) farmers and producers come from all over the Nederlands to share their wares. I got a lovely chunk of my favourite Dutch cheese, an 'oud kumin' (matured cheese with cumin seeds). Delicious!

Boxing day mushroom forage

Boxing day, and I'm preparing a dish to take to a cocktail party.

So I decided to combine the traditional Boxing Day stroll, with a bit of food foraging.

December might not be the most fruitful time of the year, but as it's mild this time around it's an ideal chance to search for edible mushrooms.

Sure enough, I found oodles and oodles of these things:

Jew's Ear fungus. Not the prettiest name, but the fungus itself can be quite pretty, as the sunlight shines through the silky, salmon-coloured flesh.

I found these in a boggy part of my hometown (Castleford, West Yorkshire). They almost always grow on old, slightly rotten or damaged Elder trees. And of course, on a patch of boggy wasteland, such specimens aren't hard to find!

So I picked about half a kilo of Jew's Ear, and the plan is to fry them - whole - with just some light seasoning, and use the cooked shrooms as a stylish garnish for my mushrooms vol-au-vents.

I hope they're as good as they look!

Goodbye, Telegraph Hill...

Goodbye, Mr Fox.

 

 

 

I'll miss you, and everyone on TH!

 

xx