We were foragers before we were farmers. We ate what was growing in the area and when it was exhausted, we moved on. While I’m not advocating for that way of life to return (I, for one, am not interested in living in a cave), there are lots of yummy things growing wild around us each year that are worth picking. I smile at posts I see on social media from younger food professionals – you would think their generation invented foraging, when it’s been around since humans roamed the earth.
Walk on the wild side
I usually suggest you make a cup of tea while you read my column, but this week I’m hoping you’ll take a walk on the wild side with me.
Some of the first edible plants to spring up each year are the native wild garlic or ramsons. This plant carpets many of our woodlands and, in a few weeks, will have pretty white flowers. The leaves and flowers are edible. With dark green leaves, wild garlic is easy to identify. Once you pick a piece, the smell of garlic will fill the air. There are loads of recipes online for wild garlic pesto, combining the leaves with nuts and oil. It’s gorgeous on pasta.
I like to whiz it up, mix it with soft butter and freeze in small portions. In the winter, a pat of the butter melted on a steak is just gorgeous. There is some evidence that wild garlic was used to flavour butter before salt was used. An ancient recipe from our folklore collection suggests it is steeped in milk overnight, stewed till soft, strained through muslin then taken three times a day to cure lung trouble. More recently, during the fly pandemic in 1918, many put wild garlic in their pockets to ward off illness.
Nettles
Next up is the nettle. Nettle soup has made its way onto many a fancy menu and is easily made with – let’s face it – a plant many of us have despaired at trying to get out of the garden. I have a lovely patch of nettles and I let them grow away as they are the food for the caterpillars of many of our butterflies. I also use them to make a liquid fertiliser for the garden. It is believed to have lots of vitamin C, iron and potassium, and (you’ll be glad to hear) once cooked, it loses its sting. While wearing gloves, the leaves are best picked in spring when they are young and tender. Folklore credits nettles with curing everything from worms to rheumatics, hayfever to measles, and has been said to help lower blood pressure and blood sugar.
I have no idea what it can cure, but I do love a bowl of nettle soup with a chunk of soda bread and the aforementioned wild garlic butter.
If the current few fine days have you making salads, why not throw in some colour and interest with a few flowers? I can guarantee, if you put a bowl of salad on the table with a few primrose, violet and hawthorn blossoms scattered through it, you’ll have a very interesting conversation starter. All are edible and, in fact, I’ve seen primroses and violets crystalised in sugar and used to decorate cakes. They are so pretty.
We all know about the superstitions around not cutting down a hawthorn tree, but it’s not as commonly known that the flowers, leaves and berries are all edible. In spring, the young leaves and flowers are pretty in a salad. They are called “bread and cheese”, but I have no idea why as they taste like neither. In the autumn, the haws make lovely jelly. I mix them with crab apples and it’s gorgeous on a warm scone on a winter night.
I hope by now you are searching for recipes to make gorse wine or coffee from dandelion roots. If that is a step too far, maybe wait until autumn when the blackthorn is full of sloes and make sloe gin. We’ll all be over to help you drink it.
Happy foraging.
Margaret Leahy: do you ask if the food is Irish when you eat out?