St Georges Mushroom

After a recent trip to northern Italy where polenta is eaten more than pasta (by the locals) I decided to try this out with some St.Georges mushrooms I found, simple and delicious!

Polenta con Funghi

Slice up your mushrooms and put to one side

Grate 2-3 cloves of garlic and add it to a warm frying pan with 100g of butter, melt slowly to flavour the butter.

Add the mushrooms and turn up the heat for 5mins to fry off then turn down to a low heat, adding a good pinch of salt to draw out the liquid in the mushrooms as you want this as your sauce.

Cook your polenta according to the packet.  Usually add hot water and stir vigorously for 5-8mins.  Stir in a good handful of parmesan cheese and serve in a mound on a plate.

Turn up the heat on your mushrooms and scatter in a handful of fresh chopped sorrel to give a slight lemon flavour.

Pour the mushrooms over the polenta and finish with a drizzle of rapeseed oil.

Enjoy!

At this time of year the Elderflowers are opening up, all creamy in colour and fragrant on the nose.  The best time to harvest your crop is on a sunny morning as the flowers will be open and ready to catch all of the suns goodness. Don’t pick on a damp day as they often have the faint aroma of cat’s piddle!

To prepare your own home brew you will need;

• 20 elderflower heads
• 3 lb caster sugar
• 5 tablespoons white wine vinegar
• 25 pints tepid water
• 6 large lemons, zested and juiced

Prepare your elderflowers by striping them from the storks by running a fork through them, too much stalk can cause bitterness in the finished brew.

Add them to a large plastic container with all the other dry ingredients, finally add the water but ensure it’s not too warm else it will kill the natural yeast on the flowers and prevent fermentation, luke warm at best.

Give it a good stir and leave for 2-3 days, by then you should see it start to fizz.

The trick is to wait to bottle until the majority of fermentation has occurred, otherwise you’ll get the famous exploding bottle situation, something you really don’t want! (speaking from experience)

Once you feel the bubbling has slowed a bit strain your liquid through clean muslin and bottle into strong bottles, I prefer to use old, sterilised coke bottles as they are stronger and less likely to explode.

It’s ready to drink in a couple of weeks, if you can wait that long!

To serve, chill overnight in the fridge then carefully pour into a jug to prevent the cloudy sediment from mixing with the wine.

Rose Marsh

This luscious recipe has kindly been provided by Rose Clarkson, a South African living in Scotland who blogs about her culinary experiences from around the world, here she talks about foraging for food with the Edinburgh Larder.

Follow her blog at nowandthendelicious.wordpress.com

 Garlic mustard and Goats Cheese Parcels

• Rose says “I have to give the credit for this idea to Karen, the chef at Edinburgh Larder. I went on a foraging walk organised by the Larder (and run by Plants with Purpose which I would wholly recommend) and after tasting my first Garlic Mustard leaf, I was rabbiting on about taking some home to cook with and how well it would go with cheese when Karen said that you can use the leaves like the Greeks use vine leaves to make dolmades. Well that settled it.”

Taken from Rose’s Blog;

To find your nearest Food Foraging Course visit the home page where all courses are listed by county.

Tim O’Grady

This recipe was written by Tim on his personal blog where he talks about all things food & drink, his love of pink shirts, romcoms and Lady Brady O’Grady the springer spaniel.

Follow his blog at timogrady.wordpress.com

Foraging can take a long time, wandering through country lanes and paths, nosing around in woodlands or pacing along a beach are fantastic ways to while away some time but occasionally you just want a quick meal from ingredients you can pull together easily.

Local & Fresh Supplies

If you’re lucky enough to have a nearby favoured wild garlic patch chances are it will be near to home.  Chances are there will also be some fresh young nettles nearby that you can grab for your tea.

Pick yourself a bunch of wild garlic, I usually pick as many stalks as will fit inside the circle between thumb and forefinger.

Take some rubber gloves and pick roughly the same amount of nettles.  Ideally you just want the top two leaves from a plant, these are the tastiest and most tender.

Quick Supper

At home, wash your wild greens but keep seperate.  Bring a large pan of water to the boil and tip in your nettles and let them boil for 3minutes.

Scoop out the nettles and put into a sieve to drain, do not throw away your water, bring it back to the boil (almost black in colour from the colour out of the nettles) and pop in your pasta, I like to use linguine for this recipe.

Squeeze your nettles so all the water comes out of them, they won’t sting at this point due to the good boil they’ve had!

Finely chop an onion and  put it in a large frying pan with a good glug of oil, as it’s cooking finely chop your wild garlic and put it in the pan with the onion to wilt down.  Whilst it is wilting squidge your nettles together and roughly chop them up and add them to the frying pan.

Stir in two thirds of a small pot of creme fraiche (full fat as the reduced fat one often splits….and it tastes nicer!) and add salt and pepper.

Your pasta should be done now so dip a mug into the pan and save a mug full of water then drain the rest away.

Tip your pasta into your sauce and give it a good stir to get it evenly coated.

Add a couple of handfuls of parmesan or hard goats cheese to the dish and stir through to thicken it.  If it gets too thick add in half a mug of the reserved pasta water to thin the dish out, it will also help flavour it.

Scatter with parmesan and a few reserved wild garlic leaves sliced up and enjoy. Tasty, quick, local and extremely fresh!

To find your nearest Food Foraging Course visit the home page where all courses are listed by county.

Ground Elder

This ‘Gardeners Revenge’ recipe has kindly been written by John Lewis-Stemple a great person to follow on Twitter, click here to view his Twitter account and to find out more about his life as farmer, forager and author.

Ground Elder Soup

• 2 large handfulls of Ground Elder
• 60g of butter
• 25g of plain flour
• 275ml of veg stock
• 150ml of single cream
• Salt & Pepper to taste

Bring it together

Start by making a basic roux, melt your butter over a medium heat then stir in your flour, mix well and cook for a few minutes.

Slowly add in your stock and mix it with the roux until you have a smooth liquid with no lumps, the slower you add the stock and the more you stir it the less chance of lumps.

Roughly chop your Ground Elder and add it to the pan, bring it to a simmer and cook for 5-10mins.

Use a hand blender to whiz it all up before adding back to the pan.

Stir in your cream and season to taste.

Enjoy!

To find your nearest Food Foraging Course visit the home page where all courses are listed by county.

Photo Courtesy of Green Cuisine

This fabulous recipe has kindly been provided by Daphne Lambert from Green Cuisine who runs inspirational courses and retreats, cultivating skills to create nourishing food.

Find out more at the Green Cuisine blog or follow on Facebook 

Wild garlic soup

serves 6

• 6 handfuls of wild garlic
• 3 large potatoes, diced
• 1 large onion, diced
• 1 tablespoon olive oil
• 1 tablespoon butter
• 2½ pints (1.5 litres) vegetable stock
• black pepper & salt

Remove the leaves and flowers from the wild garlic and set aside. Roughly chop the remaining stalks.

Cook the onion and potatoes in the olive oil and butter for 15 mins. Add the garlic stalks and stock, boil for 15 minutes until the potatoes are soft.

Chop the garlic leaves add to soup. Cook 2 mins, remove from heat and whiz in food processor.

Season and add the Wild Garlic flowers before serving.

Taken from the Green Cuisine blog;

To find your nearest Food Foraging Course visit the home page where all courses are listed by county.

Kerstin Losch

This fabulous recipe has kindly been provided by Kerstin Losch who helps people cook inspirational dishes as part of a healthy lifestyle or for special occassions, be it Continental Christmas Biscuits or creating a special menu.

Follow her blog at kerstinkitchen.co.uk 

These dumplings are made of bread & egg and are delicious as a side dish instead of potatoes or chips with many meat casseroles or as a vegetarian main course with a mushroom or blue cheese sauce (as in the following recipe). The wild garlic paste used in the recipe can be made in larger quantities and kept in jam jars in the fridge for months.  It can then be used in a variety of dishes, similar to pesto.  Use it for making your own wild garlic butter, a wonderful subtle alternative to garlic butter.

Wild Garlic Paste (Bärlauchpaste)

•  250 g wild garlic leaves (washed)
• 20 g salt
• 125 ml sunflower oil (or any oil without strong own taste)

Blitz finely in food processor and fill into jam jar

German Wild Garlic Dumplings (Bärlauch Knödel)

•  300 g stale wholemeal bread (sliced)
• 2 tbsp wild garlic paste
• 50 g wild garlic leaves (finely chopped)
• 1 small piece of wild garlic root or 1 clove of garlic
• 2 eggs
• 4 tbsp plain flour
• 2 small onions (finely chopped)
• 25 g butter

For the sauce:

• 200 ml milk
• 200 ml single cream
• 80 g Cambozola or any mild creamy blue cheese
• Salt & black pepper (freshly milled) to taste

 Bring it together

• Cut the stale bread into small cubes and pour over warm milk.
• Knead lightly.
• Fry onions & wild garlic root in butter until soft and lightly brown.
• Add onions, wild garlic root, egg & wild garlic paste to bread and knead together with your hands.
• Use enough flour to create a coherent dough.
• Let the dough rest for at least 30 minutes.
• Form small balls of roughly 70 g.
• Steam for about 20 minutes.

• In the meantime make the sauce.
• Boil milk and cream together.
• Melt blue cheese into the hot cream mixture.
• Add salt & pepper to taste.
• Bring to the boil once more.

Plate up dumplings, pour over sauce and serve!

Taken from Kerstin’s website;

To find your nearest Food Foraging Course visit the home page where all courses are listed by county.

Preserving Wild Garlic

Here are some of my favourite ways of keeping a little bit of Wild Garlic going through the year.

Wild Garlic Butter

Finely shred the leaves only (keep the stalks to one side for a later recipe) and mash together with a good quality salted butter.

Work the leaves throughout the butter and once evenly distributed shape the butter into a tube and re-wrap in it’s foil or squash into small pots and pop into the fridge to use within a couple of weeks or into the freeze to keep for up to 6 months.

Wild Garlic Oil

This works brilliantly in pasta sauces, soups and stews.

In a blender put equal quantities of wild garlic (use the stalks from above) and olive oil. Blend until you have a purée and then pour into sterilised jars and let it settle.  Ensure that there is a fine layer of oil coating the top of the puree before storing away for use later in the year.

Alternatively you can pour the purée into ice cube trays and freeze for the coming months, just pop a couple into your favourite pasta sauce for a burst of spring flavour.

Wild Garlic Pesto

Very similar to the Wild Garlic Oil above but with the addition of a hard cheese like Parmesan and nuts.

In your blender add:

• 100g freshly picked wild garlic leaves
• 50g nuts
• 200 ml oil
• 75g cheese
• Good pinch of sea salt
• Pinch of sugar

Blend together until a fine paste and either pour into sterilised jars or pop into the freezer.

Use by pouring over pasta and stirring in thoroughly.

For alternatives use:

Nuts – walnuts, pine nuts or even almonds

Oil – Olive, Rapeseed or sunflower

Cheese – Parmesan, hard goats cheese or even a strong cheddar

Enjoy!

To find your nearest Food Foraging Course visit the home page where all courses are listed by county.

Wild greens risotto

A risotto is a fantastic staple, its flexible and versatile, it can be a small, light starter laced with truffle or it can be a big, robust warming supper that will fill you up and give you a big warm cuddle.

At this time of the year with spring in the air but also a bit of a nip a big bowl of risotto is the perfect way to end a day’s food foraging.

For an early spring risotto pick what you can find, in this case, Wild Garlic, Hairy Bittercress and Nettles.

If you’ve not eaten Hairy Bittercress before you might not expect the beautiful peppery flavour it can impart, much like rocket or water cress.  The plant is small and consists of a central stem with small rounded leaflets on either side, the young plants with the first leaves on are the most prized for flavour and texture.

Wild Garlic, or Ransoms can often be founded in shaded woodland in early to late spring and is the foragers best friend.  Long lasting, tasty and abundant it can be used it all sorts of dishes.  Nettles, the gardeners nemesis are too often overlooked as a food.  They taste like a strong spinach due to the high iron content in them and are exceptionally good for you but make sure you just pick the tips which are new growth as they are the youngest and most tender to eat.

You will need:

• A small bunch of Wild Garlic
• A couple of large handfuls of Nettles
• A handful of Hairy Bittercress
• Arborio risotto rice
• Chicken stock (you can use vegetable)
• Small glass of white wine
• Parmesan cheese (couple of handfuls of grated cheese)

Pull it together.

Firstly prepare your greens.

Wash and trim the stalks from the Wild Garlic and finely slice the leaves by rolling them up and cutting them with a sharp knife.  Chop the stems into 1cm pieces.

Wash your Nettle tips and pop them into a pan of boiling water, cook for 3mins then drain into a sieve.

Wash and pick the leaves from your Hairy Bittercress and leave them to drain dry.

Put a generous knob of butter and a slug of olive oil into a pan and warm over a medium heat, tip in the chopped Wild Garlic Stems and fry for 30 seconds to infuse the oil with their flavour.  Add three large handfuls of Arborio risotto rice and stir to coat it with the garlic flavoured oil.

Stir the risotto rice over a medium heat until it starts to change colour, it should go from white to a light “pearl” effect after 5 minutes or so.  When the rice has changed colour turn up the heat to high and add in your glass of white wine, you can also use vermouth or marsarla for a richer, sweeter risotto.  Stir the rice and wine and let the alcohol boil away before turning the heat down low.

Add a ladle of hot chicken stock to the pan and stir it round.

This is the hard part of any risotto, you really need to love it now!  You will need to keep stirring the risotto until it’s cooked, adding the stock a ladle at a time as the rice soaks it all up.

Each time the pan starts looking dry you can add in some more stock and keep stirring it around, you are encouraging the rice to soak up the liquid and cook evenly whilst also helping to breakdown the starch in the rice to create a thick creamy risotto.

Keep adding your stock and stirring until the rice is cooked through. Take a piece out and have a bite, it should be firm in the middle but not crunchy.

Once the rice is cooked, take your cooked Nettles and squeeze them hard to get all the moisture out of them.  Place the ball of Nettles on a chopping board and finely chop them and then add them to the rice, stir through to evenly spread the nettles, next add the chopped raw Wild Garlic leaves and stir them through.  They will start to wilt and cook as the heat of the rice permeates through them.

Finally add in a couple of good handfuls of parmesan cheese and stir through the rice.  At this point your risotto is coming together, there should be a rich, creamy “sauce” about the rice and an intense, rich flavour of starch and greens.

Serve the risotto in bowls, season to taste then sprinkle with the raw Hairy Bittercress leaves as garnish.

Enjoy!

To find your nearest Food Foraging Course visit the home page where all courses are listed by county.

Using the wild garlic, or ransom, leaves as a packaging for something else gives them a different use than wilting as an early spring green.

Whilst I love my veggies I’m an avid carnivore so flavouring rice with a good black pudding really appeals!

You will need

100g of cooked risotto rice

Good quality black pudding, I use one from Charles Mcleod up in Stornaway, it’s light and oaty without chunks of fat in it.

Small bunch of wild garlic leaves

Chicken stock.

Bring it together

1. Take your cooked (or better still, left over) risotto rice and put it into a bowl.
2. Crumble your black pudding into the bowl and mix thoroughly.
3. Chop the stalks off your wild garlic and finley chop them into the mix.
4. Take two leaves of wild garlic and lay them out like a cross.  place a small spoon of your rice mixture in the middle of the cross then bring the sides together and fold over to create a neat little parcel.
5. Make as many of the dolmades as you like and lay them in a single layer in a shallow oven proof dish.
6. Pour over your stock so that it covers the bottom of the dolmades but doesn’t swamp them.
7. Cover the dish tightly with foil and place in a preheated oven at 180 degrees for 45mins.

Serve with a yoghurt raita as a starter or on a bed of roasted vegetables for a main course. Lovely!

To find your nearest Food Foraging Course visit the home page where all courses are listed by county.