Fat Hen

Beware the Poisonous Autumn berries

One of the most unusual poisonous Autumn berries is the berry of the Spindle shrub (Euonymus europaeus).  It is thought to be highly toxic though there don't appear to be many recorded incidents.

The pink fruit capsules eventually split to reveal bright orange berries:

The berries contain toxic cardiac glycosides and alkaoloids.  Children are attracted to the bright orange fruits, which contain toxic seeds. Symptoms occur 10-12 h after ingestion and include diarrhea, vomiting, stimulation of the heart and, in more severe cases, hallucination and loss of consciousness. In one fatal recorded case, a child had blood-stained diarrhea and convulsions before death.

(Cooper, M. R., Johnson, A. W. 1984. Poisonous plants in Britain and their effects on animals and man. Her Majesty's Stationery Office, London, England. 305 pp.)

So watch out for the inconspicuous Spindle tree in your friendly hedgerow...unless you live in West Cornwall where it is completely absent....

Lobster, seashore risotto & Ben Fogle

Have you ever dropped a live lobster into a pot of boiling water?  Not something I had ever wanted or ever intend to do in my life.  So, when I was asked to cook a wild foraged recipe with lobster for Ben Fogle, filmed for America's Today Show, I must say, I hesitated slightly.  Imagining the ASPCA (U.S equivalent to the RSPCA) lobby hounding me forever, for cooking lobster on air, I did as much research as I could into the least cruel way to cook lobster.

There is a huge diversity of advice out there regarding lobster preparation ranging from the downright barbaric to the sensible and least pain inflicting.   Claims that lobsters don't have a brain and a highly developed nervous system so it's ok to treat them horribly just doesn't ring true to me.  All living animals must feel pain.  The RSPCA have produced a protocol for killing crustaceans for eating, which, in my opinion is the most thorough and comprehensive advice on the web. 

So, that aside, I took Ben foraging for rock samphire, wild fennel, laver seaweed, gutweed, wood sorrel and chickweed.  I made a rock samphire, fennel and lobster risotto.  I served the lobster tail sliced across the top of the risotto and sprinkled crispy roasted bright green gutweed seaweed across the lobster and garnished with wood sorrel, chickweed and nasturtium flowers. I was very happy with it and the camera man said it wast the most beautiful thing he'd ever seen!  Sadly, my camera was broken so I didn't get a shot of it but once it's aired I'll get it on my website....

We ate our risotto with a crisp white above the beach at sunset...

The film ends with Ben asking me 'Can you hear the bells?'  to which I wasn't supposed to give an answer.  After about 20 takes of 'Can you hear the bells?'  in a range of quizzical tones, I began to wonder if I'd missed the joke.... and found the whole thing completely hilarious, whilst trying to keep a straight..ish face.  It all became clear when they put it into the context of the lost land of Lyonesse...an ancient Cornish legend.

 

 

 

 

Pies for all seasons and other things

Pieminister, the posh pie folk from Bristol came down to stay here with us for a couple of days earlier this year to forage for their new cook book (A pie for all seasons) and to use our place as a pie photoshoot location.  It was a great couple of days and now their cook book is on the shelves.  Follow this link pieminister cook book sneak preview.   There's a fat hen foraging section in the book and my wild pie recipe of hare with alexanders.  If you want to buy the book follow this link.  Buy a pie for all seasons.  It's had great reviews so far on Amazon.

Here's my sneak preview:

If you really want to know the recipe you'll have to buy the book.  

It makes a lovely rich warming winter pie. 

There's the hare and alexanders pie filling simmering away gently on the stove.

Now, other things:  We had one of our Gourmet Wild Food Weekends on 10th/11th September.  The weather was glorious, all the better for starting hideously early on Sat morning.  We left for the beach on our first foraging trip, the timing couldn't have been better as the sea fog lifted just as we set foot on the beach to reveal a hot sun and clear blue sky.  No-one else thought to go to the beach so we had it all to ourselves.... We had a great weekend with our new chefs, Mark Devonshire, ex Rick Stein cookery school tutor and Hannah Noel-Paton, ex Gurnards head amongst others.

Mark Devonshire

quote  "there's nothing wrong with a bit of dirt in your leeks, we call it organic black pepper, it's all good for you!"

"no, please don't take a photo of me!"

Our guests made their own soda bread with wild berries, herbs and seaweeds to take home.  They had a choice of elderberries, dried fennel flowers (fennel pollen in the trade), mugwort, alexanders, sea lettuce, gutweed, laver seaweed, dulse seaweed and black mustard.  This was the result:

Everyone became incredibly territorial about their bread as I came through with my bread knife singling one out for our lunch... they were grabbed desperately and tucked away in their bags to take home.  We had extra loaves so there was nothing to fear! 

And we had confit rabbit with nettle taglietelle for our Sunday lunch main.

 If you're wondering what the green tinge is in the pasta - it's the nettles.

 We've got one more of these Gourmet Wild Food weekends left this year on October 1st-2nd.  My wild food of the moment is the Sea Buckthorn (Hippophae rhamnoides).  If you want to find out a fantastic sea buckthorn berry recipe come on down to sunny Cornwall and be inspired.  Book here

 
Happy Autumn Foraging. x

 

 

 

Waitrose Photoshoot

Back at the end of May Waitrose came to take photos of me foraging and cooking for a photographic feature on people who work outside with food. It will be in the August edition of the Waitrose magazine.

"It won't take long" he said, and after 4 hours of posing supposedly naturally with my hat tilted at just the right angle, my basket swung in just the right trajectory, with my smile, warm, natural and definitely mouth closed, foot tucked in behind my left leg as in a jaunty stroll down by the creekside, I was beginning to lose my portrait poise...patience....and politeness.

No bad feeling to the photographer as I really liked him, but an interesting insight into portait photography.

I just hope the final result was worth the effort!  Here he is photographing me cooking some mackerel my daughter had just caught that afternoon, with some wild fennel and wild garlic freshly foraged over a wood fire.  We were on holiday camping on the Helford River.  Total Bliss.  We had a field to ourselves in St Anthony and moored our boat just a stone's throw from our camp...

yes, this photo was taken by Frank, my husband, and obviously not the photographer... I'm expecting something pretty special when the magazine comes out!

 

 

 

Countryfile Re-visited

Countryfile came down to film me again a couple of weeks ago. It was aired last Sunday 8th May. 

Follow this link for BBC I player to see the programme.  It'll be on i player for another week and is about 20 minutes into the hour long episode:

Caroline on BBC Countryfile

They ran a story about Japanese knotweed, how it's such a problem down here in Cornwall, and how people are treating it to get rid of it.  Then the story concluded with them saying that there's a third way of treating it and that's to EAT IT.  They came to my house and filmed Julia Bradbury helping me make some japanese knotweed and custard tarts and we took the tarts along with some japanese knotweed ripple ice cream to Sennen Beach to find brave volunteers to blind taste the tarts.  They all loved it, thought it was rhubarb and were surprised to know it was Japanese knotweed (as expected). 

If anyone is going to eat Japanese knotweed they must be armed with the knowledge of the law.  It's an offence to grow knotweed or cause it to spread in the wild.  You must not drop any pieces of knotweed for fear of it spreading and you must find out if the knotweed you want to pick has been sprayed or not.  The season for knotweed is now over.  You must pick it when it's small and looks the size of asparagus.

 

6 Course Wild Food Tasting Supper at Flinty Red

Just returned from Bristol last week after heading up there with a car full of freshly foraged ingredients for Flinty Red's Wild Food Tasting Supper.

It's the second one we've done and was a roaring success.  I did this supper in colloboration with Matt Williamson, chef of Flinty Red and Rachel Higgens, wine expert, who matched each course with an organic or biodynamic wine.

Chef extraordinaire, Matt Williamson

Wine expert and owner of independent wine shop, Corks of Cotham, Rachel Higgens (right)

This was the menu:

Deep Fried Rock Samphire & Roasted Laver Seaweed

Bloody Mary's with wild black mustard & alexanders salt

........

Elderflower Cured Trout with Wood Sorrel & Chickweed

2010 Reserve de Gassac, Mas de Daumas Gassac

.........

Fresh Hallumi & Wilted Wild Greens

(Alexanders, Fat Hen, Wild Chervil, Three cornered leek)

2007 Pinot Gris, Mochel

.........

Laver Seaweed with Clams & Pancetta

2009 Casa de Mouraz Rose

.........

Mixed Wild Leaf Salad

(Black mustard, Common Sorrel, Navelwort, Pink Purslane, Hedge Bedstraw,

Sweet Violet Leaves, Chickweed, Rock Samphire, Hairy Bittercress)

.........

Nettle Ravioli with Walnut Cream

2007 Negrette, Chateau Plaisance

.........

Carragheen Seaweed Pannacotta with Poached Japanese Knotweed

2009 Muscat de Saint-Jean de Minervois, Clos du Gravillas

 

It's likely that this will be an annual event now.  I usually display and label all the wild ingredients for everyone to see, touch and nibble and then as each course comes out I talk about the ingredients, where they come from and how we've used them in each dish.

Wild Food Samples displayed on the bar

It was great fun but I came down with a thump after losing my car key and having to pay £120 to replace it and whilst waiting for a new key got a parking ticket.....oh well, I felt a bit better after some retail therapy in Bristol's charity shops! Where there is money people give away nice clothes.  Down 'ere at Lands End the car boot sale is our department store and we wear our clothes till they are rags!!

Come on a Wild Food Coastal Walk on Good Friday, April 22^nd 2011

from the Gurnards Head, with Caroline Davey

Followed by a 3 Course Wild Lunch in the pub,

cooked by head chef, Bruce Rennie

 featuring wild seasonal local herbs, salads, vegetables, flowers & fruit

 Starter

 Vichyssoise of Alexanders

 Main Course

 Hake, three cornered garlic gnocchi, wild garlic (ramsons) & sea beet (wild spinach)

 Dessert

 Japanese knotweed mousse, coulis, sable biscuit, white chocolate ice cream

To Drink

 Homemade elderflower cordial

 We will meet in the bar at the Gurnards Head for coffee at 10am.

 The walk will take approximately 2 hours incorporating a stunning section of the coast path

 Contact Caroline to book 01736 810156 / 07767 792417 / e:caroline@fathen.org

 or book online  http://www.fathen.org/wildfoodwalkwithlunch.htm

 £40 per person

(includes the guided walk, coffee, 3 course lunch, elderflower cordial)

 

Caroline Davey

Ecologist & Forager

BSc. MSc. MIEEM cEnv

 www.fathen.org

e: caroline@fathen.org

t: 01736 810156

m: 07767 792417

Gwenmenhir, Boscawen-noon Farm,

St Buryan, Penzance, Cornwall. TR19 6EH

 

Pies, Pies & More Pies

Pieminister, purveyors of posh pies, came down to stay last week for a couple of days of pie making, pie eating, pie photographing and pie ingredient foraging for their new cookery book on pies.

They've devised over 100 pie recipes for their book.  I got involved with them to forage the ingredients for wild accompaniments for pies and for wild pie fillings.  We made a totally delicious hare and alexanders pie and had a wild salad with their spring vegetable and ricotta pie and then some wild cabbage, sea beet & wild garlic with their winter lamb pie...

 

We ate a lot of pies over two days and had a really good laugh.  Check them out.  They are a Bristol based company selling 70,000 really nice pies a week!  www.pieminister.co.uk.  Their book is out in September: look out for the section on foraging!  The photographer James Bowden www.jamesbowden.net took the photos above and for their book.  We started on a roadkill pie of badger with apple and cider but it got lost amongst the myriad of pies that were made...I don't think anyone had the stomach for it.... but, it's now in the freezer awaiting some brave supper guests....

 

 

Inside Out, BBC1, 7.30pm Tonight

Last October I took Nick Baker, the naturalist, of 'The Really Wild Show' fame, foraging for a day which will be aired tonight on Inside Out.  This is a regional BBC series, so you'll get to see it if you are in the West Country.   I got him to dig up burdock, painstakingly, with a crow bar, and I cooked him a pigeon, burdock and wild leaves salad with blackberries, elderberries and slippery jacks.  It was a great lunch.  Then we had limpet & mussel linguine on the beach, described by Nick as like 'eating a rock pool!.'  xx

Wild Cornish Tricolor Taglietelle

Pasta drying on my clothes drier

I had a great day last Wednesday foraging with Ross Bruce, the head chef of the Felin Fach Griffen.  We went to my usual haunts and foraged laver, sea beet, fool’s watercress, alexanders, black mustard, three cornered garlic and navelwort.  Who says there’s nothing to eat in the winter??  We brought it all back here and created a veritable lunchtime feast in my kitchen.  I roasted the laver in some sesame oil and had that as an appetiser with chilli flakes, seasoned with sesame, salt and sugar.  Ross said it was the best way he’d eaten laver (great compliment coming from a Welshman).  Then we had three cornered garlic gnocchi with a black mustard and alexanders cream sauce (yum yum yum).  Then the fun really began. We let rip on the pasta machine.

 

Fool's Watercress inlaid into lasagne sheets

Stripy sea beet taglietelle

Stripy sock lasagne (made with laver seaweed and sea beet)

We made green pasta using seabeet, seaweed pasta using cooked laver, and inlaid whole herbs into regular egg pasta.  We let our creative juices flow and rolled out a whole load of stripy taglietelle, green taglietelle and various combinations of lasagne sheets with stripes, stars and inlaid herbs.  My fantastic clothes drier (made by my lovely sister in law Bridget) came in handy for drying the pasta on.

Living partly in Italy she was very happy to see her creation put to such great use.  The beauty of it is that the poles are made of chrome and not wood, perfect for pasta.   My 3 year old son Jed loved the pasta so much that he munched through piles of uncooked taglietelle.  I’m sure it’s not good to eat uncooked flour but he’s still alive and got his daily micro nutrients from the sea beet and seaweed.