Fat Hen

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

 

 

 

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!!

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....

 

 

BBC News Story - excessive mushroom foraging

Whirlwind half term to Bristol.... loved it....great to leave the land of pasties and top up on a bit of diverse food and culture...wonderful dosas at the Thali cafe (twice), plates of gorgeousness at Flinty Red (Of course), tapas at the Clifton Lido, glass of Rioja and a plate of paella at El Rincon accompanied by live fiddle, trumpet and guitar on a sunny Sunday afternoon...then, amidst my annual clothes shopping trip a call from the BBC.  Got whisked off in a taxi, after scrabbling some hedgehog fungus, chanterelles and winter chanterelles together from Matt at Flinty Red and Sam at the Lido, to cook up on camera for a story about mushroom foraging.  My hour and a half cook and interview was squashed into 24 seconds (!) on the 6 O Clock News.  Check out the story:

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-11623702

I do think that taking all there is from the woods is really bad practice, selfish and short sighted.  It leaves nothing for the enjoyment of other people or for wildlife.  I have heard that some commercial foragers are just taking everything, edible and poisonous and then getting them sorted by experts to sell on to the restaurant trade.  Bad news.  There's nothing wrong with foraging for wild food but there is something wrong with taking everything for a quick buck and leaving nothing for wildlife and for other's enjoyment.  I do encourage all people to get out foraging as it's a brilliant way to begin to have a relationship with nature.  I don't believe in conserving habitats like museum pieces, I believe the more people that have an interactive relationship with nature the better and there's no better way for the average person to have that connection than through foraging for wild food.  Historically we would have all had a real and deep relationship with the land and would have known our surroundings intimately with a real knowledge of the edible and medicinal plants of our locality.  The more people that have this experience, the more likely it is that we will look after the land and have some natural and uncontaminated habitats left for future generations. So, in a nut shell, get foraging, but do it with respect for the land, wildlife, other people and with sustainability in mind. X

 

Countryfile & Other Autumnal Stuff

Wow.  I've finally come to the end of the most manic work phase so far in the history of Fat Hen.  It's been a fantastic Autumn with loads of interesting things happening.  Food Fairs, Gourmet Weekends, Taster Days, Days for children, Production of endless jellies, fungi and seaweeds and a bit of t.v. 

Countryfile came down West to film a piece with me for their Autumn Special - to be aired on Sunday 31st October.  They wanted to get a community out foraging together like we would have done in the old days.  So, they managed to russle up about 13 local Penwithians (not a great cross section of society but hey it's not easy getting a 'real community' out on a Thursday for a whole day).  So, with their presenter, James Wong (of Grow Your Own Drugs fame), I took them foraging along the coast at Perranuthnoe, brought them back here and cooked a 3 course WILD dinner for everyone. 

 
James Wong doing a 'David Bellamy' in the undergrowth!

The wild ingredients being prepped for dinner.

In my kitchen - getting ready to cook.

We had mackerel with a wild salsa verde, nettle and alexanders risotto with a wild salad followed by meadowsweet carragheen pannacotta, blackberry compote and fennel flower shortbread.  It was great fun, totally mad and I absolutely LOVED it.   After a whole day's filming it will be 8 minutes of their Autumn Special though extra bits of film and the recipes will be posted on their website.

We had a great Fat Hen Weekend on 9th-10th October with Matt and Claire cooking, their children Grace and Ivy in tow.  We also had James and Harry down from Dorset to help for the weekend.  James is a photographer and Harry a chef.  Check his fantastic photos out. www.jamesbowden.net  Can't wait to see the photos when they come.

Last Friday I did another day's filming with Nick Baker, the naturalist who used to present 'The Really Wild Show'.'  We made a film for a regional BBC programme called Inside Out.  Not sure when it'll be on but sometime this Autumn or in the New Year.  We went foraging for our lunch and dinner all over West Cornwall.   I was so incredibly HAPPY with the totally wild lunch we foraged and cooked.   We had wood pigeon breast pan fried with mugwort, sweet elderberry vinegar and a handful of blackberries and elderberries.  It was cooked nicely rare, sliced and served on top of a bed of wild leaves (young alexanders leaves, black mustard, sorrel and navelwort), with some sauted burdock root and slippery jack mushrooms and drizzled with elderberry viniagrette.  YUM!

Then we went on to cook what Nick described as 'Eating a Rockpool' with a limpet, mussel and sea lettuce linguine for dinner on the beach.   What a fun day and an insight to the extremely long winded process of making a film.

This Autumn I have started running wild food days for school children and I had my daughter Ella's class from St Buryan Primary school last week. 

It was a great day and it was lovely for me to have 14 children sitting around my table rather than a bunch of grown ups!

They all tried some crab apple and elderberry fruit leather and nettle soup and got to sort all our foraged plants into categories of food, medicine, useful plants and poisonous species.

They immediately organised themselves into a game of hide and seek in the stone circle. Children are so free and SO GREAT at BEING SPONTANEOUS.  They made flags using leaves, berries and flowers as natural dyes and went back to school happy and excited! xx

 

Cornwall Food and Drink Festival

OMG - How scarey - I did my first public cooking demonstration at the Cornwall Food and Drink Festival in Truro on 25th September.  I looked down at all the cooking kit I brought with me and wondered how on earth I was going to find the right things at the right time and god only knew if I'd get the timing right between cooking and talking.  All mic'd up and ready to go.  I had brought so much wild food with me to show everyone from seaweeds to mushrooms to greens to flowers etc. and there was sooo much interest from everyone that it felt GREAT.  I cooked up some mackerel with a wild salsa verde made with rock samphire, black mustard, wild apple mint and pickled 3 cornered garlic flower buds. Then a meadowsweet carragheen seaweed pannacotta with fennel flower shortbread and blackberries.  Yum.  It all got wolfed down by the audience.  Luckily Simon, our helpx volunteer saved me by coming up to chop the greens for the salsa verde whilst I got on with talking- it would have been a painfully silent 5 minutes of chopping otherwise.  Crispy laver seaweed went down well too.  I was really pleased to find some Cornish Rapeseed oil on sale at the food fair, so bought a bottle and used it instead of olive oil in the salsa verde.  

Lovely ladies.

Got a little over excited when the demonstration had finished and downed a pint and a half of Cornish Rattler - perhaps not the best drink when you're just about to lead a 2 hour wild food walk.  It was all good fun even if I was a bit inebriated. xx

 

A Most Peculiar Forage

Off we went this morning, baskets in hand, children in tow, down to the woods on a mushroom hunt. A perfect Sunday morning jaunt with the kids and their two friends Jacca and Rosie.  Rope swings, fungi in abundance, a flask of hot chocolate and a good old hearty walk on a misty moisty morning. 

We immediately had a great haul of slippery jacks, ceps, yellow brittlegills and numerous wonderful and poisonous fungi.  After a good slug of hot chocolate, we were just reaching the end of the woods and about to return back to the van when Molly the dog started sniffing in the hedge and sharp eyed Rosie spotted some creatures scuttling together.  They weren't rabbits, they were too small for foxes or badgers; were they rats?  or ferrets?  On closer inspection it was a whole family of guinea pigs, apparently recently dumped judging by the pile of fresh straw next to them.  Minutes later 3 pit bull terriers tore past us as we cradled our guinea pigs affectionately, shielding their gentle souls from the dogs, with their owner steaming up their rear shouting 'don't believe everything you read in the press.' A close shave, they wouldn't have stood a chance if we'd arrived 10 minutes later.

 
  
We bundled them up into our basket, took them home and the children were ecstatic with our newly found pets. Ella and Rosie both said it was the best day of their lives and we were all rather excited about our unexpected find.

 
 
The guinea pigs were immediately named beefsteak (for the big daddy), pine, cep, fly agaric and lucky.

   
  
So we now have 5 guinea pigs - one is already missing down a hole in the granite workshop wall and some very happy kids.

 
 
Needless to say, our repeated attempts at putting braised guinea pig with ceps a la creme on the menu that night didn't go down too well with the kids.

Now, who's going to feed them????? xxxx

 

 

 

Fat Hen's Gourmet Wild Food Weekend 11th-12th September

Once again the gods were looking after us last weekend.  The weather forecast for last weekend was torrential, so when we had clear skies and baking hot sunshine we were pretty chuffed to say the least.  

Last week I foraged chanterelles, parasols, jelly ear fungus, black mustard leaves, alexanders leaves, sorrel, wood sorrel, navelwort, limpets, laver seaweed, fool's watercress, watercress, wild fennel, hazelnuts, rock samphire, pignuts, blackberries, elderberries, haws, rosehips, sloes, burdock roots, sea buckthorn berries, wild chervil, dandelion leaves, wild cabbage, sea beet, chickweed, mallow leaves, hedge bedstraw, mallow flowers, smooth sow thistle, mugwort, wild carrot, silverweed roots and nasturtium flowers. 

It all got eaten by our hungry foragers, along with plenty of wild venison, Boscawen-noon pigeon, rabbit and Newlyn mackerel.

Matt came down from Flinty Red  http://www.flintyred.co.uk/  in Bristol with Tara http://www.tarastable.co.uk/ to cook for the weekend with the help of Hannah from Willow in Totnes and two volunteers, Simon & Denise from New Zealand.

We had 17 foragers this time (the largest group we've had so far, and this really is the max).

 

It was a great weekend and a culinary journey for the food centred being.  We ate and ate our way through Matt's creations with dishes such as black pudding with laver seaweed, rabbit with gnocchi, venison with wild cabbage and sea beet, limpet bruschetta, pigeon with chanterelles, hot chinese style rabbit salad with burdock, sea buckthorn berry cake, carragheen pannacotta with elderberries and so it went on and on....

We all had a rather marvellous time, the hedgerow cocktails flowed gently, followed by a torrent of wine and live folk music played by our resident fiddler, Frank and trusty regular mandolin player, Hadrian. xxx

Parasols a plenty and Valentine Warner

'Tis now the season for the parasol on the West Cornish coastline... perched just above the rough unimproved coastal grassland, they are there for the picking...

'Twas luck for me they were sitting pretty the day before Valentine Warner came to forage and cook with me for a new tv series on UKTV's Good Food Channel, Coast to Coast ('twill be aired after Christmas but who in god's name has access to this channel??).  I don't even have a regular aerial, let alone a digibox. 

Oh, the joys of filling up one's basket with fungi.  Next stop revealed the golden chanterelles in the woods, the beginnings of a very good forage.  We went to Godrevy and Upton Towans the following day and collected mussels, rock samphire, spear leaved orache, fennel, wild apple mint, black mustard leaves and sea buckthorn berries.  Valentine cooked it up very simply with the parasol cap as the base to the salad, mackerel, pan fried with fennel flowers, chanterelles and mussels scattered on top with the greens and crispy laver seaweed accompanying it.  It was incredibly fresh, wild, brimming with vitality and all ingredients except the British rapeseed oil had come from within 10miles of my kitchen. 

Now, if anyone has access to UKTV, let me know and I'll pop round with a bottle of wine after Christmas to have a butchers.  xxx