Below are a few of my own wild food recipes. However, before that, here are a few links to some other sites with recipes:

Wild food recipes 1
Wild food recipes 2
Wild food recipes 3
Wild food recipes 4
Wild food recipes 5
Wild food recipes 6
Wild food recipes 7
Wild food recipes 8
Wild food recipes 9
Wild food recipes 10 (seaweeds) - you'll need to scroll down a little bit.

Seabuckthorn Cheese cake

In Ray Mears’ latest Television series looking at British wild foods he introduces us to the tangy delights of seabuckthorn. I have been using this wonderful plant for a number of years now, and have found several great ways of using it. It works excellently as a sorbet and also as a drink when combined with elder flower (incidentally, I sell this to the Goodshed Farmers Market in Canterbury sometimes – they don’t have any just now, but if I get organised I may be able to knock up a couple of litres soon). It also makes a superb cheese cake topping. Given that this is the only photo I have, here is the recipe. I must warn you though, it’s a recipe that will drive some people mad in that I rarely ever measure anything. I love the random element in cookery – my dear mother would be pulling her hair out!

Ingredients (approximate)
½ a pint seabuckthorn syrup
1 tub of ricotta cheese (about 300g I think)
1 tub of mascarpone cheese
Sugar to taste (about 3 heaped table spoons)
2 whole eggs
vanilla essence
For the base:
rich tea biscuits
digestive biscuits
butter
sugar

Method
Gather about a kilo of seabuckthorn berries (preferably between September and December when they are a vibrant orange colour – after December they tend to turn white. When white the flavour is still good, however the nutrient content will not be as high). In a saucepan crush and boil the berries in a little water. Pass through a fine cloth (pillowcases are excellent for this). Add either concentrated apple juice or sugar to taste. The berry is wonderfully tangy but extremely bitter – so you may have to add a considerable amount of sweetener). Reduce down in a saucepan until it is thick and syrupy – not so that it sets like jam but just before that point. Set aside. Crush a mixture of rich tea and digestive biscuits with some sugar. Add a large knob of butter to a pan. Gently melt it, then add the crushed biscuit/sugar mix and blend together off the heat. Press this into a small flan case (the ones with removable bases are best). In a bowl mix together the cheese, some sugar, the eggs and vanilla essence. Pour this onto the biscuit base leaving until the case is almost full. Remember you need to leave enough space for the berry topping. Bake the cheesecake in the oven without the topping at about 180 degrees C for 30ish mins. Allow it to cool in the oven. When cool, carefully reheat the berry topping and evenly pour over the top of the cheesecake. Garnish with raw seabuckthorn berries.

METHOD:

Place all ingredients in a large saucepan except the cream, 1 bunch of the wild garlic and 1 pint of the milk. Bring to the boil and simmer for about 20 minutes, then liquidize. Also, liquidize the remaining pint of milk with the chopped wild garlic. Swirl some of this and a little cream into the soup once you have put it in a bowl. Garnish with a couple of garlic mustard leaves - only a couple though, as this is the food plant of the beautiful Orange Tip butterfly's caterpillar.

METHOD:

Boil the rice, rinse to cool it then set aside. Steam the chickweed for a few minutes until wilted-down, then chop it quite finely. Beat the eggs.

In a bowl combine the egg, chickweed, rice, pinenuts, salt and pepper.

Lightly butter/oil a small ramakin mould. Half fill with rice mixture covering the top with grease proof paper rounds. Bake in the oven at 180 degrees C for 10-15 minutes. Turn out on a plate to cool. Spread out the pumpkin and sesame seeds on a roasting tray, sprinkle with liquid aminos and grill until lightly toasted. Toss the salad leaves and halved cherry toms together with a very basic lemon juice and olive oil dressing. Serve with the rice and sprinkle a small handful of the toasted seeds over everything.

NB: Only pick the top couple of inches of the chickweed, as the lower stems can be stringy. Flowers are edible too. Chickweed tastes very different raw and cooked, so this starters provides the perfect opportunity to try it both ways at the same time - kinky but delicious!

NB. Wood Ear mushrooms are one of the few fungi that can be found at all times of the year - growing on dead or dying elder trees. They can be picked fresh in damp weather, or picked dehydrated from the tree and soaked in water for 20 minutes.

METHOD:

Thoroughly clean the laver to remove any bits of sand. Boil in vegetable stock for 2 hours. After one and a half hours add the sliced onions. 15 minutes before the end of the cooking time, take off the heat and roughly snip up the seaweed with a pair of scissors (whilst still in the pan).

Return to the boil, add the whole or halved Wood Ear mushrooms (after cleaning and removing any clinging bits of bark) and shrimps. Finally, crack in 3-4 eggs, boil for a further 30 seconds and serve.

METHOD

In a large saucepan gently brown the onions in olive oil. Add the meat and cook in the onion/oil mix for a few minutes. Add the bay leaves, allspice, pepper corns, salt, ground pepper,juice of one lemon, carrots and a few cups of water to the pan. Cover with a lid and simmer for half an hour stirring occasionally. Add the courgettes. Add more water if necessary. Cook for about another half-hour at a slow but steady boil.

Beat the eggs and mix with remaining lemon juice. Gradually ladle off all the hot cooking liquor from the pan and carefully beat it in with the eggs.

Return to pan. Serve with hunks of good rustic bread to soak up the juices.

Sweat the onions in the olive oil. Meanwhile, boil a pan of water and add the dock leaves sow thistle and dandelion leaves. Boil for about a 30 seconds to a minute. Strain off and discard the water (to remove excess bitterness from leaves). Add this as well as the chopped dill, parsley, nettles, hairy bittercress and all other ingredients to the meat pan. Also add about 3 cups of water. Simmer for about one hour with a lid on the pan, stirring occasionally to ensure no sticking and add a little more water if necessary. Again serve with good rustic bread to soak up the juices.

Wash and steam the greens for about 15 minutes. Allow to cool. Steam the potatoes (using a pan, lid and colander if you don't have a proper steamer) for 30-45 minutes until firm but well cooked. Mash them. Finely chop the greens and mix with the mashed potato, adding salt to taste.

Knead in enough flour to form a smooth firm dough. Roll out the dough into one or two finger-thick long snake-like pieces and cut off one-inch pieces from this. Score each one with a knife. Boil in salted water. When they have risen to the surface of the water, leave for about a minute and then remove with a slotted spoon. Make a rich tomato sauce with garlic and basil to serve with the hot gnocchi. Garnish with Parmesan.

Wash and destalk the cherries. Place in a pan and crush with a potato masher to extract enough juice to stew the fruit in. Stew without sugar for 10-15 minutes. Remove one cup of cherries and set aside in a sieve so that any juice can drip off. Crush the remaining cherries and cook a little longer to extract as much juice as possible. Tip this into an old pillowcase or into another sieve squeezing/pressing out all the juice.

In another pan cover the well-washed seaweed with the milk, cream and sugar. Bring to the boil and simmer for about 15 minutes. Stain through (yet another) sieve. Wisk 2 egg whites till they form peaks. Remove the stones from the first cup of cherries that where set aside and chop them into smaller pieces (making sure they are fairly dry). Mix the pieces of cherry with the now warm seaweed-milk mixture. Fold in the egg whites and pour/spoon into small wineglasses. Leave a few centimetres clear at the top of the glass. Boil the remaining cherry juice until it has halved in volume. In a small bowl mix a little of this juice (of which there should be about a pint) with one tablespoon of corn flour. Then gradually mix in the remaining juice. Bring to the boil for about 30 seconds. Pour a little of this onto the mouse in each wineglass. Refrigerate for a few hours then serve.

NB. This recipe also works well with lime blossom (Tilia europaea). In this case a couple of handfuls of blossoms should be boiled up with the milk and then strained off before adding the seaweed. Also, as a substitute for the cherry juice topping, make a strong and sweet lime blossom tea with the addition of the juice from one large lemon.

…..or, to be more inclusive, human beings cannot live by bread alone. True? Maybe. Certainly we need to be more inclusive in terms not only of gender or, of course, varied diet, but also in regard to our other needs for self expression – through music, poetry and art, as well as with respect to a whole plethora of other social, psychological and, no doubt, spiritual needs. However, the question that really interests me concerns wild food. Susan Campbell, in her paper, The Hunting and Gathering of Wild Foods: What’s the point? An Historical Survey  - a paper delivered at Oxford and reprinted in Proceedings of the Oxford Symposium on Food and Cookery 2004: Wild Food, poses the dilemma quite succinctly when she states, “….nor have I yet met anyone who could convince me that modern man could subsist on wild food alone, legally or illegally, the year round, in a northern climate.” The question and the challenge, then, stand: Can a person live by wild food alone? There is only one way to answer such a question and that is by actually attempting to do so. However, a further question presents itself: Why would anybody in his or her right mind wish to attempt such a thing?
      Having utilised wild foods in my diet for a considerable number of years, I know that the sheer variety and range of what is generally available is quite astonishing. Such a vast myriad of both familiar and more exotic flavours, textures, and unique nutritional dietary contributors means that, given sufficient availability, it would surely be theoretically possible to live on wild food alone. Well…… that remains to be proved by the possible sweat and tears of actual practice. Nevertheless, addressing the question, “why?” , is at one and the same time to address those less tangible needs which, at the outset, it was admitted that without which we could not live. This is because eating wild food is not just about nutritional sustenance; it’s a lifestyle choice. That choice is in part a personal and practical answer to various disagreements I have with the world, the way it is, or rather, the way it is as an outcome of our interaction with it; the way it is, the way we are, but don’t have to be – culturally, socially, economically and, of course, environmentally……………….

      I’ve been thinking for two weeks now about carrying out the practice: living from only wild food a whole month and have decided to begin on the 30th of June – just a few days away now. I’m even going to subject myself to a battery of medical tests tomorrow morning. However, as the day itself approaches the likelihood of success seems to do the opposite, retreating instead into the far distance. In the first place, I am so ludicrously busy at the moment that I barely have time to think about cooking a meal, let alone producing one from wild food. In the second place, I thought that although it’s mainly leaves and seaweeds that are available now, this wouldn’t be a problem because, no doubt, I could always top up any nutritional deficit with a choice piece of roadkill; that was, until I had lunch with a friend – the sparkling Aglaia, She claims to be able to sniff out meat eaters from across the room. Actually, her method is more visual. Apparently it’s the dull eyes - compared with the bright sparkling eyes of the vegetarian - that’s the tell tale give away sign. Is it the shadow of death that dulls the inner flame, a corrupting of the soul to its very core or merely the sluggish arterial flow of stupefying saturated fats that deadens the vital light? Who knows the answer to such an imponderable question? All I do know is that after a few months of poor health – I fell in the woods carrying birch sap and really put my back out, what could be better than to start sparkling again? So, meat of any sort is completely off the menu – for now.
     Of course, referring back to the quote from Susan Campbell, there is no doubt I can, as she says, “subsist”. Yet subsistence carries the implications of just getting by, of the bare necessities, of surviving, being alive, but alive only to a paltry kind of mere existence. Perhaps for a month such an existence – given no other commitments, could prove to be a liberating and nature-engaged escape from the day-to-day grind of work related toil. However, for me those commitments do exist (they’re not all toil fortunately). No, I want to live fully, to be nothing less than a whole man, to transcend the everyday, to feel the struggle of the impossible and know that it can be surpassed. A month of wild food will be hard. I will learn that I’m sure. However, to really rise to the challenge I must embrace the whole year and its generous seasons. Only then will I know if it is possible to live by wild food alone.

     The coming month will be a preliminary study for a wild food year – beginning later this year. I will be writing a daily blog about how things are going over the coming month. If you are interested please return to this page which I will be updating every day.
     Now, time to go for an invigorating walk in the glorious lightening, thunder and rain……..