Springtime is absolutely my favourite time of year for foraging so I set myself the mini-challenge of cooking with as many foraged foods as possible during April. The majority of items in this album were fresh, but as I preserve a great deal in the plentiful months I have used some stored foraged foods too. I was pretty rubbish at remembering to photograph things (far too keen to eat them!) so this is just a selection.
In these photos the foraged ingredients are blackberries, borage, broom, calendula, carqueja, chickweed, dandelion, dead nettle, elderflower, fat hen, goosegrass, henbit, herb Robert, mallow, navelwort, plantain, purple gromwell, rowan berries, salad burnet, sheep’s sorrel, viper’s bugloss, wild radish and wild rocket.
The photo that started this challenge. Bean and tomato soup, home made wholemeal / rye bread, fresh home made goat cheese, home made blackberry (foraged, of course!) and tomato chutney, sauerkraut, and a pretty foraged salad with edible flowers. All home grown, with the exception of the flour and the beans.
Lots of things in this one! Wild radish (leaves and flowers), yellow brassica flowers from the veg garden, plantain, chickweed, sheep’s sorrel, salad burnet, dandelion (both leaves and petals), parsley from the veg garden, goosegrass, herb Robert and a few broom flowers.
Roasted chickpea and salad burnet pan breads, thick chunky soup with mallow leaves, salad based on chickweed with finely chopped goosegrass, wild rocket and wild radish flowers, and fresh goats cheese.
White bean and dead nettle(also henbit dead nettle, I tend to think of them as the same) soup, topped with herb Robert. Salad of navelwort, apple and turnip flowers. With Jeroen’s home made bread rolls and delicious fresh goat cheese.
White bean and wild radish houmous with dandelion petals (the colour is more turmeric than dandelion though!) , with lentil and rowan berry batter slice. The rowan berries were dried and ground in autumn.
Freshly foraged salad. There’s a bit of cabbage in there, otherwise all wild plants. Mainly chickweed, with dandelion and sheep’s sorrel. The flowers are broom and purple gromwell in this case.
A filling slab of cheese pie here, containing goosegrass and plantain as well as more traditional veg. Served with another foraged salad, fried onions and an egg from our chickens.
Rice with plantain, dandelion and rowan berries, with a sage and onion sauce and salad based on chickweed with sprouted lentils and carrot
The edible flowers in this mainly foraged salad are broom, viper’s bugloss, calendula, and cabbage. With one of my favourite salad dressings which has a splash of elderflower cordial in it.
Carqueja rice, cheese pie containing all sorts of foraged greens, and a salad of sprouted lentils and sheep’s sorrel with orange and calendula petals.
Couscous with onion, pear and mallow, accompanied by pan breads with turmeric, fat hen and sage, and roasted chickpeas with crispy wild radish. The fat hen was dehydrated last summer. Photographing food well is incredibly hard, I’m discovering!
Gorgeous wild salads with the addition of cabbage flowers which were our contribution to a delicious lunch at Mount of Oaks recently.
Such colourful flowers to top the salads.
Fresh cheeses decorated with fresh edible flowers. There were on our market stall and really caught the eye.
With rosemary, turnip flowers, calendula and viper’s bugloss.
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