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

Final forage around Telegraph Hill?

I am preparing to possibly leave Telegraph Hill and move in with friends in Brighton.

Today I was invited by Louise and Ella at Grow Wild, to lead a farewell forage around Telegraph Hill. We went out under leaden skies, to find a whole host of wild weeds still growing. We identified nettles and dead-nettles, mallow, cleavers (goosegrass), dandelion, plantain, mint and chickweed. All these were growing just behind St Catherine's church, around the edges of the new community garden. I picked mostly nettles (both stinging and 'dead' varieties) which I made into a hearty soup for my lunch. I also showed them the sloe-berries in the Lower Park, which were picked to make sloe gin.

I made certain to share a link to the Transition Lewisham Foraging Map, an open resource for all foragers in the area. Here's a link: http://goo.gl/maps/ds38T

More info about local foraging might also appear on the Grow Wild website.

Concern Bake a Difference event...

Thanks to all who came and contributed... We had a fabulous day, baked innumerable cakes, and raised £73.57 for hungry and malnourished children. 

Okay, I'll enumerate the innumerable cakes:

1x weird sugar-free egg-free Yorkshire Brak

12x chocolate brownie buns

1x magical apple meringue pie

2x experimental orange & caraway syrup cakes

1x plate of delicious bread-buns

1x plate of gluten-free, blue cheese straws

1x heart-shaped coffee cake

and lots of love.

Faerie Bake and Share

Sunday 14th October, from 11am. Secret roof-terrace in Islington, London...

Join us for a morning of fun, coffee and cake, all for charity!

From 11am we will come together to bake our own selection of sweet treats. What would you like to make?? Help and advice will be on hand from White Rose and other expert bakers. 

When they're ready we'll enjoy our treats, hot from the oven! There'll be plenty of time to chat and relax over tea or coffee. 

There should even be plenty of cakes left over to take home or share with friends!

The event is on behalf of Concern's 'Bake a Difference' campaign. The aim is to raise £100 on behalf of malnourished children. Entry is NOTAFLOF for faeries, but please consider a donation of £10 if you can afford it.

Please RSVP on the facebook event page, or by emailing dazflint@hotmail.com - this will help us prepare enough ingredients for the day! Don't forget to mention any special dietary requirements... :)

Address details and more details will be sent to attendees before the event!

More details at  http://www.facebook.com/events/422860547770679/

xx

A New Look for Common Growth

The Common Growth community food garden now has a colourful new look! 

From this:

To this!

At the end of July a host of volunteers called at the garden for an afternoon of barbecue and handicraft. We painted a set of plywood letters (and colourful shapes) which are are now decorating the fence. Passers-by can no longer say they don't know where we are! :)

And then here's our latest harvest, which in the height of summer is starting to look almost as colourful as the fence!!

More summer cooking with foraged food

The German-style 'Green Sauce' makes a return to my dinner table, with this elegant creation:

Fried Polenta with Green Sauce and Crumbled Cheshire Cheese with Chives

The Green Sauce can be made using any foraged leaves (whether raw, or blanched if necessary - as in the case of nettles). Here I used a mixture of plantain, wild London rocket, chickweed, and frozen wild garlic leaves.

Basically you take a cup of green leaves, a generous slug of good oil, some garlic (though I used frozen garlic leaves), a tablespoon of cider vinegar, and a couple of tablespoons of sour cream (or creme fraiche I suppose). Just blitz everything in a blender - season and flavour with capers, lemon juice, even anchovies or chopped boiled egg.

Here I've plated up my fried polenta, dressed it with lashings of the Green Sauce, and crumbled over some delicious Cheshire Cheese with Chive from Boyer's of Camberwell. I've finished the plate with a trio of fantastic Sicilian olives from the farmer's market on Telegraph Hill.

Enjoy!