Yorkshire puddings with wild garlic

Just a quick idea, as it's Sunday and you might be making your yorkies later for the roast.
Mix your normal yorkshire pudding batter mix.*
Rinse a handful of wild garlic (ramson) leaves under the tap and squeeze the water out.  Finely chop and add them to the batter.

 Cook as normal.  Yum!
This was an experiment as I wasn't at all sure whether the garlic would burn during the cooking process or whether the flavour would work but it was a success.  As I love garlic and don't have meat for my roasts I'd put these with anything but I'd imagine them working well with a chicken roast, and maybe lamb.

*My regular go to batter mix is 4oz plain flour, 0.5 pint milk and one egg.  There's been a lot in the media over the last year suggesting that actually these quantities should all be the same. IE by volume - crack the egg into a measuring jug and add the same amount of milk and flour (not sure how you do the flour?).  Yorkshire chef Brian Turner advocates the addition of a little vinegar for a good rise; and in fact explains the 'measure the same method' by using a cup.  (Video here.)  Pretty much all the recipes (including my own) recommend a resting period for the batter mix before cooking. Although not Queen Delia!  In fact there's a whole lot of discussion and arguing on the 'perfect' Yorkshire pudding.  See here for a little more info.
Anyway, I like to mix mine up a little by adding herbs to the batter, or try a little hard full-flavoured cheese, or wholegrain mustard.  I guess horseradish could work for accompanying a beef roast - try it and let me know!

Food swap - pasta with salmon and capers paste from Pantelleria

Manu from the beautiful Cooking Manu blog had the great idea of hosting a food swap for bloggers and non-bloggers alike.

I was partnered with Silvia (co-incidentally Manu's sister in law) who is based in Milan, Italy.  I sent her some local Devon wholegrain honey mustard.  I'm intrigued to see what she comes up with for that!
She sent me something new to me - capers paste.  It's from Pantelleria which she explained is an island in Sicily.  (There's a very interesting post about why capers from that region are so special here.)
Now, I was supposed to have posted a recipe using her ingredient by the 31st March but with typical 'Ruth-time' I'm just a little bit late - oops!
I played with various ideas in my head before deciding to use it in a fairly simple pasta dish.  As I'd never used it before I wanted to get a feel for the strength and depth of flavour first time round.

This made a large meal (with leftovers) for 2.

1 bag fresh pasta
2 salmon fillets (mine happened to be hot smoked ones with peppercorns)
1 onion
2 cloves garlic*
1 tsp+ dried basil
1tsp+ dried oregano
1tbsp+ capers paste (pasta di capperi)
Handful calabrese florets
Handful wild garlic (ramsons) leaves*
Little grated strong cheese, if liked
EVOO
Black pepper
Salt
*Use less garlic if you're not a fan.  I am so it tends to go in everything!

Heat a splosh of EVOO over a low heat in a decent size frying pan.
Finely mince the garlic and add to the pan once the oil is warming up.
Finely chop the onion and add it to the pan.  Sweat down for several minutes.
Get a large pan of water boiling for the pasta.  Once it comes to the boil add a generous pinch of salt and the pasta.  Fresh pasta generally only takes 3-4 minutes so keep an eye on the time.
Add the herbs to the onion pan and stir well.  If you feel the mix is drying out now or at any point you may want to add a little water - nab some from the pasta pan if so.
Add the capers paste a little at a time, stirring in well each time and giving it a minute to cook in then tasting.  Bear in mind that the plain pasta will soak up a lot of flavour.
Drain off the pasta once it's done, reserving a little of the cooking water.
Cook the salmon fillets in the pan with the onions and garlic, flake them up as they cook through.
Throw in a handful of calabrese cut into small florets and 4 or 5 minced ramson leaves.  Add a little of the pasta water now to steam the veg.
Grind in black pepper to taste and stir into the pasta.  Add a little grated cheese if liked, I felt the dish needed that extra flavour to balance the salty umami notes from the capers and the strength of the garlic.
Serve and enjoy.

 This was delish and gave me a good idea of how the capers paste works in a dish.  It certainly has a big flavour but also seems invaluable for the umami notes.  I can see this having an incredible affinity with good tomatoes and black olive tapenade on some fantastic bread...Mmmmm...

Spring and happiness

Well it's been some time since my last post.  Much stuff has been happening, not the least of which is that the Chap and I have gone our separate ways.  Whilst this saddened me, such is the way of life.  Onwards!  As it was a good 6 weeks back now I'm getting on with moving on.  More of that later.  Maybe.  ;-)

Yesterday was International Day of Happiness and also (apparently) the first day of spring.  (I thought that was today the 21st myself, but there you go.)  I've been mulling over taking up the 100 Happy Days challenge for some time and decided to start it yesterday.  The idea behind this is that for 100 days you make the time in the day to focus on something that has made you happy, no matter how large or small.  You take a pic and post it with the tag #100HAPPYDAYS.  Hopefully the outcome is that you can nurture a more positive outlook in yourself, get in the habit of noticing the happy stuff and generally feel happier in yourself.  I'm posting my pics daily on facebook but once a week-ish I'll post the pics on here too.  Just to keep it in the forefront of my mind, and in case anyone out there is interested too.  So far 71% of the people attempting the challenge haven't made it to the 100 days; citing lack of time as the most common reason, so I'm interested to see how I do.

As it's the start of spring it seems an appropriate time to make some changes and to this end I've decided to focus my efforts on a proper de-clutter at home.  Frankly there's a whole small bedroom that's unusable as it's piled up with boxes and crates so it's time it all went.  I've long had a plan for that room to be my library (I own a lot of books) and computer room so I really need to be able to actually see the walls!  I also have a bunch of the Chaps stuff hanging about the place that I keep being told is being collected 'soon'.  That needs to go as I'm getting an exercise bike and it won't fit in the spare room until he takes his stuff out of it.

The spring flowers are a welcome sight after the long months of storms and rain.  The joyous presence of crocuses, daffodils and primroses do a lot to lift my spirits on the daily walk to and from work as they burst forth from the hedgerows and gardens.  All helped by the sudden (finally) arrival of the wild garlic.

This has gone mad in the last week or so and I'm lucky enough to have great swathes of it growing on campus just behind the building I work in as well as along the local river banks a few minutes from  my home.  I'm planning on making my first batch of 2014's wild garlic pesto this weekend.  I can almost smell it now...  :-)

Random Recipe - New Year, New Book - 'Spring' pasta without Wild Garlic

January’s  Random Recipe challenge set by the lovely Dom over at Belleau Kitchen tasked us with picking a recipe from a book we’d received for christmas.  I got a fair selection as you can see.  It included the rather wonderful ‘A Curious Cookbook’  - a look at historical recipes from some of the earliest cookery books on record (14^th C) right up to wartime (sparrows on toast anyone?) 

Given my record in past Random Recipe challenges (rabbit leg, stuffed carrots &c) I thought I was sure to get that book but my random number generator (the Chap) thankfully picked one of the other books he got me – the Herbs installment of the River Cottage handbook series.  These books always have the recipe section at the back so I flipped it open at that end and got… Spring Pasta with Wild Garlic and Purple Sprouting Broccoli.

Now, although we managed to get some ramsons (wild garlic) on Jan 27th last year I thought that one week into 2014 would be pushing my luck rather.  That's not spring in the UK by any stretch of the imagination.  However, I duly went for a riverside potter on one of the few non-rainy days we had around the middle of the month and found....shoots.  Teeny tiny shoots, that was all so far.  Not a massive surprise.  I gathered the tiniest ‘handful’ (midget hands you understand) of the shoots to give an edge of the garlicky flavour and resigned myself to using the suggested chives that the book mentions can be substituted if you have no wild garlic.

The recipe also uses purple sprouting broccoli.  I’m afraid I have to admit to completely forgetting about that detail so this got made with regular calabrese, a substitution that is also mentioned in the book itself.

Overall I found this a bit too rich with creamy goats cheese smothering everything and an additional grating of parmesan on top.  I find it hard to believe that I’m actually going to type this but, I think it was a little too cheesy.  [Too cheesy!  I know what you’re thinking – how can something ever be too cheesy huh?]  It was too rich from all the cheese, rather than the flavour, is what I think I’m trying to say.  It certainly needed a good squeeze of lemon juice or something to cut through it and lift the flavour a bit; it was all rather samey.  That said I imagine this would be a very different beast with actual wild garlic in it.

It was a nice quick dinner to knock up though and one that's pretty frugal if you make it with regular calabrese and Aldi's goat cheese. :-)

It warrants remembering for when the ramsons finally do unfurl their leaves out of the overflowing river Exe.

The clever ones amongst you will have noticed that I mention the middle of the month earlier in the post yet the date of writing is the somewhat later 30th.  Yep - I actually made my random recipe in good time this month but still didn't get it up before the cut off.  Please let me join in Dom, please...

Not foraging season, yet.

I went for a somewhat optimistic little bimble to an area on campus that I know grows wild garlic in abundance during my lunch break today.
Despite myself, the Chap and his brother managing to find some Navelwort to nibble last weekend, and spying these fungi on a tree, there was no sign as yet of the Ramsons.

I didn't really expect there to be, but as it's the first sunny day for a while after all these storms, I fancied a breath of fresh air and a little vitamin D.
Sometimes I forget just how lovely the Campus is here; I really should make more of an effort to have a ramble around in my lunchtimes.

 I did come across this fungus; given it's somewhat forbidding purple hue I left it where it was though!

  Anyone know what it is?

Wild food finds, an apology and my dad

Well blimey - I hadn't realised it had been over a month since my last post but it was all the way back on the 1st May!  I've missed several blog challenges and cooked others but never posted them and generally probably come across as a bit slack.
I seem to have found it hard over May to shake the malaise that accompanies a bout of 'teetering on the brink of' depression.  [I also found it very hard to write that 'D' word then too.]
However, I am here now, albeit with a fairly brief post.  (I realised I was missing posting stuff as I can get so het up in these massively long and wordy missives laden with fairly dull photographs that they take so long to write they never get completed.)
So - that's the 'apology/explanation' bit done - now I have a question or two for us.

This is Rosy Garlic.  The Chap and I first came across this on Scilly last year but I recently was massively excited to spot a patch just minutes from the house!  Win!  I had been under the misapprehension that it didn't grow here on 'the mainland' as it likes it warm.
I am coming up fairly short on recipes for same on t'internet though so wondered if anyone else had any ideas?  The Plants For A Future page seems to have the most handy information I've seen so far - just from a very small amount of googling this morning.  Interestingly it also includes cultivation info - may just be worth a try.  I might recommend it to my Ma as well as several other sites suggested that it works to deter deer from your garden.  She suffers from the deer that live in the woods opposite coming and eating all her pansy flowers in the front window boxes each year - they very neatly just take the flowers which understandably does vex her rather!

This image I'm not so sure of - it looks a lot like Navelwort to me but the leaves seem very large.  That's the chaps hand there too - not mine.  (Although there's not that much difference in size between our hands tbh...)  Navelwort can be eaten raw or cooked and I'd imagine would add a lovely crunch to salads but as ever with foraging - you must must be 500% sure what a wild plant is before you think of eating it.  So - a bit more research needed on this one I guess.  In fact I am leaning more and more towards it not being Navelwort - the leaves of Navelwort are apparently generally the size of a human navel so these are deffo way too big.  Hmm - wonder what it is then?

Lastly I gathered some 'Jack by the Hedge' (garlic mustard) a couple of day back and made a vaguely Greek style pie with it in.  I shall endeavour to post that later or in the next day or so but - I will not treat it as a 'fail' if I don't.









Today (here in the UK) it's Father's Day.  Dad was 'got' by cancer in 2005 and I think of him every single day.  Often that is what gets me moving when that malaise tries to descend; the sense of not wanting to let him down and still to show I can do my best.  Anyway, I thought I'd share this picture of my parents getting married back in 1969.  It's not the best pic but it sits on my mantelshelf alongside one of my mother at 21 and I love it.  Look at Ma's hemline!!!

We never know how long we may be here for so love your important people and hold them tight as they could get snatched away without warning nor quarter given.  x

Themes of wild garlic pesto

3 weeks back the Chap and I went for our first forage of the year and were pleased to see the wild garlic sprouting already. We’ve been meaning to go back since but have variously been deterred by rain, being busy and watching the opening 2 weekends of the 6 nations rugby. So today, it being reasonably sunny (though very windy) and lacking in rugby fixtures we made the trip and found a lot more of the garlic has come up.
As a contrast this is the same area I pictured last time, you can see many more of the shoots have unfurled properly, and the river has taken its rightful place within it’s banks again! There were also plants all the way along this stretch that weren’t in evidence last visit so we should have plenty to keep us going this year.
So we stocked up and came back with about 300g of the stuff. We’re wild garlic pesto aficionado’s and made a few batches once we got home trying out using hazelnuts as well as the standard pine nuts and adding lemon juice to some. I think the lemon juice really lifts the mix and I’m a big fan of that version. Otherwise I did prefer the pine nut version to the hazelnut one. I also made one batch with half basil and half wild garlic as I had some fresh basil in the fridge to be used up which was lovely. So with this many herbs I’m going to enter this into this month’s Herbs on a Saturday over at Lavender and Lovage. Having just nipped over there I’ve also found that serendipitously this month there is a mini-theme of foraging!  :-)
We’ve adapted our pesto from the HFW recipe in his Hedgerow book which incidentally is a good read as are the seashore and mushroom ones in that series.

Wild garlic pesto and variants thereof - for a small batch that fills a 200g-ish size jar:

50g wild garlic, rinsed well of any mud etc
30g pine nuts / hazelnuts
30g parmesan / veggie version
80ml olive oil + a little extra
S + P
10ml lemon juice – if using

Toast off your nuts gently. Pine nuts I do in a dry pan, for the hazelnuts we added a little oil as they’re less naturally oily than the pine nuts.

Rough grate the parmesan and place it, the nuts, garlic and salt and pepper in your FP and blend.

During blending pour in the olive oil. Taste and adjust, it may need more salt than you think to bring the flavours out but it’s always best to err on the side of caution to begin with.

With the motor running once more add the lemon juice. You can do this in 5ml increments if you want until it’s pleasing to your own taste. I made one batch deliberately more lemony as that’s my favourite.

Pour into a sterilised jar and tap sharply on the counter top to encourage it to settle and remove any air bubbles.

Lastly drizzle a little more oil over the top to ensure it’s sealed from the air then store in the fridge.

For my basil and garlic version I had just over 25g of basil so just made it half and half with the garlic and used pine nuts and the lemon juice. We had some straight away on a hardboiled egg with a little sea salt sprinkled on and it was divine!

This is also very good with cheese and crackers, stirred through pasta or one of my favourites – smeared on top of the cheese on toast before grilling to melt the cheese. I think it could also work with spinach and feta in a pie, drizzled into the top of soup, tossed with new potatoes for a salad; there’s a myriad of uses.

If you have a patch of wild garlic local to you this is well worth making and works out pretty cheap. The garlic is nuppence and although pine nuts and the cheese are more pricy you only use a little of them. Try it and you’ll be a convert too!!

Aaannnnd......first foraged meal of 2013

Open the fridge and see what sad things need using up to add to your free wild garlic and nettles.  Having 'foraged' within the fridge as well as along the river bank go forward thus:

Heat a little olive oil and sweat off a sliced onion (mine was red) and a bunch of slighly limp spring onions.
Add plently of freshly ground black pepper, 1tsp dried basil, 1tsp dried oregano / marjoram (they are pretty much the same thing aren't they?) and about 0.5tsp dried sage.  You may need a little splosh more oil at this point as the herbs will suddenly soak it up.
Slice the last handful of cherry toms in half and add.  Give everything a good stir each time you add stuff - I don't actually need to say that do I?

Rinse your wild garlic and nettles well and seperate the two if you only had one bag on you to forage with, as I did.
Reserve a few of the smaller leaves of the garlic and roughly chop the rest.  Add to the pot.
Slice a few mushrooms (I used 5 chestnut ones and 3/4 of a white one that had randomly been left in the fridge - that was deffo the Chap and not me!) and add to the pot.  Cover to gently cook down whilst you get the beans.
Open mahoosive tin of cannellini beans.  I got 3 tins on my last Approved Food order for the princely sum of £1.20, ie 40p each and only when they were delivered did I realise they were the big 800g / 480g drained size!!  Absolute bargain!!  Drain and rinse well then add to the pot and stir some more.
Add 100ml dry white wine.  TBH ours was just a cheap bottle from Aldi I got to cook with.  Cover again (after some more of your finest stirring action, natch) and let simmer for 10+ mins. 
We weren't actually that hungry yet so I let it go for about 10/15 mins then turned it off.  Do stir every so often whilst it's simmering so it doesn't catch or stick.
Once you're ready to eat stir in your washed and picked over nettles - get rid of as much stalk as possible is my personal advice, they can be a little on the tough hairy side!  Add the reserved garlic too and wilt them both in for 3-5ish mins.
Taste and season; you will need salt as the beans soak everything up but beware of adding it earlier as it can apparently make beans go hard.

We had ours topped with a salmon fillet and a handful of mussels each which I did quickly in a little water and a splosh more wine with a few of the wild garlic leaves in too.  Leave the fish off to make it even more frugal and veggie/vegan if you make sure the wine is. 
Nom for free!!!  Well - kind of.  :-)

First forage of the year

 As the sun made a rare appearance today the Chap and I went for little bimble along the river before heading for a lovely roast for National Potato Day.  (Really.)
I wanted to take a certain route to see if there was any sign of the wild garlic yet and we were super pleased to spot some sprouting through the mud in our favourite spot.  Due to all the rain and melted snow the river's rather higher than is the norm so the most advanced plants were on the sunny bank that was also most nearly flooded - here's yours truly harvesting, pretty much 'in' the river!  Nearer the camera and behind me you can see the thin sprouts where the plants in a little more shade are still just pushing through the earth.

As we didn't get too much garlic (it's still early in the year after all) I also picked a handful of nettle tops and I'll pop them all in a soup/stew with some beans, veg and whatever comes to hand later. 

Very pleasing to know that even in January we can get some free tasty food with the minimum of effort walking and rummaging in the undergrowth.  It was a thoroughly pleasurable amble in the sun so I wouldn't really count it as effort myself.  Also nice to see that it looks like a healthy year for the wild garlic as we want to make masses more pesto from it this year.  Top stuff - we ran out far too fast last year! 

We finished the afternoon by going for the aforementioned roast at The Mill on The Exe, a riverside pub near us where they have the distinct advantage of doing a veggie option on the carvery.  Being right on the river they do have somewhat tenuous boundaries to their garden area!

Sloe gin a go-go

We went foraging for sloes at the weekend.  As the fruit has all been early this year we found the lower branches already stripped clean.  However, we gave thanks for short people as I [being the slightly taller of the pair of us] pulled over the higher branches so we could reach the berries on them, before letting them spring back unharmed. 

We collected a respectable 1.64 kg (him) and 1.8something kg (me) giving us about 3.5 kg total between the 2 of us which took us just under an hour and a half - not bad going.  We ended up a little scratched - more from the brambles growing throughout the bushes than the blackthorns themselves but it was a thoroughly enjoyable afternoon in the sun pootling along the river.  There's got to be worse places to pick sloes surely...

The sloes are now safely ensconced in the freezer (in lieu of the first frosts getting them) and we have the sugar and the le parfait jars - just the gin to get now and we're on our way.  :-)

Foraging season

It's foraging time again - although really there's something available just about all year round.  However the fungi are most plentiful around now and I'm itching to get out there gathering.  For now though here's the little pretties I picked up last year - I also wanted to share them as part of Black & White Wednesday over on The Well-Seasoned Cook.

The other free food that should be bountiful now are sloes - we're determined to make vast amounts of sloe gin this year as last year's single batch really didn't last us long enough.  This time we're thinking dawn ladder raids and blow everyone else!  :-D  Maybe gloves this time too...

Seaside bimble with a forage thrown in

Well in contrast with the excess of the food festy we took a little bimble along the coast the previous week from Exmouth round to Sandy Bay and picked up some rather more frugal foodie goodies.  The weather was glorious, the sea - er - bracing!  [Mighty nippy.]  All in all it was a thoroughly restorative day for someone cooped up with hurty eyes for too long.  Found various shells, some dog whelks and one full size whelk which we stashed in the cool under a rock and failed to find again on the way back!  [Darn those pesky rocks all looking the same!]  I loved the colour of this little crab shell though.

We had taken along the River Cottage 'Edible Seashore' guide and having carefully perused the pages on mussels decided we'd collect a few of decent size to try.  I must say it's a tiny bit thrilling to be doing so when you consider mussels in a pub or restaurant are perceived more as a luxery item with price tag to match and here we were getting them for nuppence - the best price!  Do be aware though that you will need a 'sacrificial knife' once you get home to deal with them.  No - I don't mean for any dodgy offerings to some formless deity of your choice but a knife you don't mind getting very blunted for the purposes of pulling off the *beards and scraping off any barnacles.  The knife I snapped the tip off of getting into oysters after last years food fest does me nicely!  Having got a plastic bag from the local plastic tat / buckets 'n' spades type shop [we were woefully underprepared apart from the book having both forgotten to pick up anything to put any foraged goodies into] we collected a decent handful of mussels and some Sugar Kelp seaweed.  According to the book of words it's good flash deep fried as a kelp crisp - you can tell the difference from regular kelp (which can also be treated this way) as it has wavy edges and a bumpy look whereas regular kelp is flat.

Now - mussels can contain grit as they're filter feeders.  (This is why it's very important indeed you only get them from clean water areas and at certain times of the year which I'm not going to tell you thereby forcing you to look it up yourself.  I take no responsibility for any wild food misadventures, only for my own!)  Containing grit means you need to 'purge' them - soak them in aerated salt water for several hours with or without oatmeal (apparently it can speed the process) before cooking.  If you're going to cook them in a sauce like a classic moules marinière this is important as grit in the dish is a real killer to the enjoyment of great food.  We however; due to time constraints amongst other factors, opted to cook them in plain water letting any grit fall into the pan then shelled them and used them in a fish pie.  Chap and I did taste one each 'straight' as it were and they were delicious.  Sweetish as really fresh prawns can be, a delight to eat knowing we'd scooped them from the waves mere hours before.  We'll definitely be repeating this experience though we'll have to wait now until after the summer as this is when they spawn so you shouldn't pick them.  Apparently they are biggest in Autumn after their summer feeding and before they lose weight over winter so it'll be a treat I'm looking forward to already.

*I learnt from the book that the 'beards' or 'abyssal threads' are made from iron the mussel extracts from the seawater and used to be woven into cloth called 'mussel silk' which such luminaries as Caeser and Ghengis Khan used to wear!  Cool huh?  [In case you hadn't picked up on it yet I am a lover of the odd random and/or esoteric fact or three.]

Oh and the kelp?  Er...we kinda forgot about it so the taste of Sugar Kelp crisps remains to yet delight our tastebuds, or not as it may be.  (We had to throw the seaweed away.)  We will gather some again another time though.  I know - my bad.  :-(  Even free food wastage annoys me!  :-D

Wild food weekend #4 - the Wrap up

Having spent the latter part of Saturday and almost all of last Sunday feeling decidedly under the weather [no - not the foraging but a bug going round at work I picked up for the weekend] once I felt slightly better and the sun came out on Sunday early evening I fancied a meander along the river. We discovered a great swathe of the broad leaved wild garlic Ramsons about 5 mins from home. Certainly closer than the previous stash I knew about of the narrower leaved type. [I just can't ascertain whether that is Field garlic - wrong leaves, Garlic chives - wrong flowers, or what. Plants for a future has a list of 19 types of 'garlic' and I'm still not sure.]We gathered some leaves and a few of the unopened flower heads having read somewhere on-line that these are good fried in a little butter. [Sorry - I just can't find it or remember where I saw this.] Always ensure you have the right plant - Ramsons can resemble the leaves of Lords and Ladies / Cukoo Pint which is very bad for you indeed. This is one below.

You will help yourself by foraging by hand too - don't cut big swathes with scissors or a similar instrument as you could easily get unwanted leaves in there along with the garlic. Lily of the valley is another plant with similar looking leaves that won't do us any good either.

As well as the Ramsons we found great swathes of nettles - far from the road so ideal for harvest, wild chives which I didn't even know about, mustard garlic and a plethora of other edible greens. We also mentally marked the position of some cherry trees so will return in season to see if they produce anything nice for us.

This was foraging at it's best - a gentle walk in the sun surrounded by the fresh smell of just-rained-on spring greenery drying out, in earshot of the river and it's wildlife with the bonus of some freebie tasty food. What more does one need? :-D [Other than a practical foraging bag of some kind but bear with me - it's in the mulling around stage in my head at present.]

Oh - nearly forgot to tell you - Chap said the squirrel tasted like a gamey pork, with an undertone of nuts / acorns. So not chicken then. :-D

Wild food weekend post #3

Some more of the edible plants we saw on our foraging walk, or 'bimble' last weekend at Otterton Mill. Bear in mind that all these were in the village; it's certainly not necessary to go trekking off for miles in the wilds to get some fresh free greens. Give it a go!

Bittercress - make a pesto using the raw leaves together with nettles and wild garlic, hazlenuts or walnuts and oil, lemon juice and parmesan. Grows in a rosette as seen here. Nipplewort - used to be used as a soothing poultice by nursing mothers, hence the name. Leaf and stem both edible. Use leaves raw in salad or wilt gently to cook. Yellow Flowers.

Cow Parsely - another of the umbellifers therefore easily mistaken for the poisonous Hemlock plant so I'm not posting a pic. It has a hairy stem though with an angle or ridge to it. I think most of us know what cow parsely looks like in the hedgerows but if you're even thinking of eating it get a good field guide! Use the stem - has an aniseed flavour. Can eat raw or cooked and can pickle it. Peel before using.

Cleavers / Goose Grass - yep - that blimmin sticky stuff that hooks it's little burrs onto your clothes and your cat in the spring and summer months. Best early in the year - around February but fine now. Just pick the very tops and cook - it's too scratchy to eat raw. Don't overcook. The seeds can be eaten when young - like peas. Can also use the scrunched up plant as a natural scourer and at one time people in the Outer Hebrides would weave a quick temporary basket from them for gathering foraged goodies. Red Valerian - Has red / pink flower spike heads. Cook leaves as greens and can eat raw in salad.

Navel / Penny Wort - Use the succulent leaves in salad. Taste better when growing in shade where you will find bigger leaves too.

So a lot of easy to find plants out there can be eaten and there's many more than this. Nettles and Wild Garlic to name 2 favourites.

After our walk we returned to the mill where later in the day we watched the cookery part of the wild food foraging. Here we had Alexanders as well - these grow either by or very near the sea and pretty much can be treated like celery - they sauteed it in butter which seemed to work. I must admit that in the cookery theatre everything seemed a little overwhelmed with butter but as least it gave us an idea of what all this stuff tastes like - and whether you think it's worth going out and getting again. As well as the Alexanders and various of the plants we'd seen on the forage we had Sea Beet; which the Chap and I have had before, and Ground Elder - something I was eager to try as it's so easy to come by. We also had Wild Sorrel and Garlic Mustard (Jack by the Hedge) stems.

I was a definite fan of the Alexanders but found myself a little disappointed by the Ground Elder. It had been done with the stems on and I found I was chewing and chewing and chewing then picking them out of my teeth after. I'd try them again but just the leaves if I cooked it.

All in all and good experience though, which inspired us to go foraging for some Alexanders on the way home down by the coast at Budleigh Salterton. There was masses here - I don't seem to have taken a pic of the whole plant but they have glossy leaves [yep - it's another umbellifer so be careful] and should have this pinkness to the stem sheaf where the leaves are growing out from.

I thouroughly recommend giving foraging a go - you get out in the fresh air, learn stuff and filled with pleasure when dinner time comes round that you got that bit of it for free. You find yourself looking at the hedgerows and pavement edges with a different eye I can tell you!