Tom Parkinson is a forager by definition, if not entirely by trade. Foraging being what it is, Tom reluctantly earns the bulk of his living behind a desk like most Londoners. At weekends he runs guided foraging walks, and makes a range of foods and products using seasonal wild ingredients gathered within Greater London.
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October 18, 2009
Only the last few bumble bees, buzzing around grumpily and crashing into living room walls, seem to be resisting the arrival of Autumn. Everyone else is getting on with it, particularly the squirrels of Greenwich Park, who are racing against the foragers to gather up chestnuts for the winter. The soil in the flower beds is pitted with little craters, and if you hang around long enough a squirrel will hop along, dig a hole, drop a chestnut in cover it up again, before darting off for another.
Chestnuts offer a guilt-free harvest in London. The squirrels in parks have their diet supplemented with monkey nuts all year round, and there are so many chestnuts to be had that anyone who wants to get a bag full can do so with ease.
I’ve been having raw chestnuts for breakfast every morning as I walk through the park. They’re best roasted, but a freshly fallen nut, shelled and rubbed to remove the bitter pellicle (the thin, translucent inner skin) is glorious, as crunchy and creamy as a Kentish cobnut.
We made a little video which you can watch here.
www.londonforager.com/roast-chestnuts-video.htm
Chestnuts are extremely versatile. They make fantastic puddings, ice-creams and fondants, and also go well with braised kid or beef. They also form the basis of the classic confectionery marrons glaces, but I wouldn’t recommend trying these at home- it’s a lengthy delicate business that’s best left to the commercial kitchen.
Aside from chestnuts, we’ve gathered bags and bags of Malus Golden Hornet crab apples, damsons and sloes this month. People have been asking about sloe gin- where to find sloes, when to pick them etc. I’ve yet to find a wild blackthorn bush here, and I can’t work out why this is (our sloes were from Bedfordshire, not London). So I’m afraid I can’t help out with the first one. As for picking them, rural wisdom dictates that you should wait until the first frost. This ‘bites’ the sloes, breaking the skin and softening the fruit. If you don’t want to wait however, you can simulate Jack Frost’s cruel embrace by bunging them in the freezer. Then let them thaw and they’re ready to be made into sloe gin.
Don’t feel that your dreams of liqueur making are shattered though just because you can’t find sloes. Damsons are a worthy substitute, and pretty much any fruit will sing if steeped for long enough in alcohol. There are a few basic principles regarding the sugar/booze ratio for different fruit, and some fruits will need a syrup rather than powdered sugar, but beyond this you can experiment and the results will rarely be disgusting.
There’s still time to make crabapple schnapps for Christmas if you can’t get hold of sloes. There’s nothing to it, just cover a couple of handfuls of crabapples in 50cl or so of neat vodka, seal in a kilner jar and store in a dark place until mid December. It’s just as good as sloe gin.
We’ve got a couple of other liqueur recipes on our site, and I’m in the process of putting together a pdf which I’ll put up for download later in the week (promise).
www.londonforager.com
August 10, 2009
Just got back from a fantastic weekend foraging for samphire in Hesketh Banks, Lancashire. My uncle’s farm runs up to the bank, beyong which is the marsh and eventually the Ribble estuary which leads out to the Irish sea. We left the farm at about 3 o’clock, an hour or so after the tide had gone out, and picked our way across the marsh. It took us about an hour. There were about 1000 cattle grazing along the marsh, and the grass was covered in baby crab shells as brittle as rice paper. the further out towards the Ribble we got the gutters in the marsh were deeper and wider, and along them we started to see the samphire. Eaten straight from the ground it tasted amazing, like salty plum skins. Eventually the grass stopped and samphire covered the ground. We gathered a good few shopping bags full while admiring the view of St. Annes across the water, with Blackpool Tower poking over the top. It’s fairly late for samphire and some of it was beginning to go to seed, but we’ll still be able to make some fantastic pickles which will last all year, and tonight I’m going to have some with poached eggs.
Expeditions like this allow you complete removal from the stresses and preoccupations of everyday life- I don’t think I thought about work, money, or politics once in the four hours we were out. I’m very grateful to my uncle for taking us out- without his knowledge of the tides and the marsh it would have been very dangerous. I’d recommend samphire picking to anyone, but make sure that you know that where you are going is safe, and wherever possible check with someone who has local knowledge.
July 24, 2009
I’ve been struck down with porcine flu, but in spite of that I’ve been harvesting thunderbolt plums, mirabelles, greengages, cherries and wild rocket.
Wild rocket pops up everywhere these days, billowing about on top of stone-baked pizzas, pastas and salads in restaurants and selling for a fortune in supermarkets. It’s almost become culinary shorthand for la dolce vita, but like so many voguish foods it wasn’t always that way- in less adventurous times it was considered too strong-tasting, and given to pet rabbits as a staple green (it was usually referred to by its other name Arugula). People are often surprised that it’s a common wild plant.
Going by a leading high-end food shop’s 2009 price of £1.59 a bag, I’ve seen at least £3000 worth growing on a mound in the Olympic village building site, and another £1000 worth on the embankment of the DLR’s Stratford branch. It’s all over the place. The flavour in wild London rocket has amazed everyone I’ve shown it to- it’s wonderfully hot and peppery and blows the bought stuff out of the water. You can spot it by its buttercup-like flowers which rise high above the leaves on long stalks.
We’ve done some good walks recently, one with a nice journalist from the Wharf magazine, a free paper read by bankers in the Docklands. Hopefully they’ll want a few hours’ respite from their high-octane work lives and book themselves onto a walk! You can see the article here
http://www.wharf.co.uk/2009/07/finding-flavour-by-the-roadsid.html
In September we’ve been invited to give some talks and running workshops at a ‘Get Green, Get Creative’ Fayre run by the Claremont Arts and Therapy Centre and the Cubitt Art Gallery, and doing some projects with London secondary schools. There definitely seems to be a growing interest in foraging and I genuinely believe that it does wonders for the soul, so I’m really looking forward to these.
The first brambles are now ready- They’re next on our list, for wine and desserts, and to form the next layer of my Rumtopf! I’m also looking forward to going up to my Aunt and Uncle’s farm in Hesketh Banks in Lancashire to harvest some marsh samphire. We’ll follow the tides out in the afternoon.
Please get in touch if you want to come on a walk in August or September! Contact us through our website www.londonforager.com
April 16, 2009
The competitive nature of the human spirit manifests itself everywhere it can- and foraging is no exception. This weekend, in Mytholmroyd West Yorkshire, the fiercely fought battle of the World Dock Pudding Championships is taking place. I doubt there’ll be many internationals flying in, but it’s a West Yorkshire dish so it makes sense that the cream of Dock Pudding makers would be found close by.
Dock pudding is a breakfast dish made from Dock leaves, onions and oatmeal. Here’s a recipe from www.calderdale-online.org
Traditional Recipe
Ingredients
2 lb fresh, sweet variety dock leaves (polygonum distorta)
2 large onions, or 2 large bunches of spring onions
½ lb nettles
A handful of oatmeal
A knob of butter
Salt and pepper to taste
Method
Wash and clean the dock leaves and remove the stalks
Wash and clean the nettles
Chop the onions
Fry the vegetables in the butter until tender
Add the oatmeal and cook for about 20 minutes, stirring to prevent the mixture from sticking, the pudding is then ready for eating or for storing in a sealed container
I think this must be a vegetarian recipe, as I’ve seen elsewhere that it should be fried in bacon fat- but then again these sorts of things are always fiercely debated, with recipes hidden behind picture frames and buried in tins under trees (or maybe I’m too much of a fantasist). Anyway, if anyone is tempted to try it, it’s not the same dock you’d use to balm a nettle sting. It’s a different plant that grows mainly in the north of the country, but you could always use more nettles, or young burdock leaves (might be a little bitter though) or hogweed.
The Hawthorn blossoms have broken through. I’m making some wine and filming it this weekend, so my next blog may well be a Youtube link.
I’ll be doing some guided walks in May in places around South London, so let me know if you want to come along for a stroll and a snack.
March 29, 2009
Still waiting for the BBC news feature to happen- it’s been trundling on for a few weeks now, with me having to cancel one week, them the next. In terms of foraging though, the further we get into spring the better as I’ll have lots more camera-worthy stuff to show them. Should happen this week, fingers crossed.
It’s been a great week for foraging. I’ve found enough three-edged leek to feed hundreds down an unkept path near my parents’ house. It’s the most fantastic ingredient in potato salads and chinese-inspired dishes, and the flowers- delicate, white bells that you’d expect to smell perfumed and pretty- have an intense spring onion flavour and are fantastic in a mixed leaf salad. Also lots of Wood Sorrel out at the moment. The leaves are like big, cartoony clovers and the taste is very special, like dry apples. Cleavers (stickyweed) are edible at the moment too, though they’re about to reach the stage when they get tough and stringy and not worth bothering with at all.
Most exiting of all though has been the discovery of hundreds of violets which have sprung up on the lawn of my block of flats. They’re escapees from a flower bed I think, but that’s wild enough for me (they do occur wild too, just rarely in London). I’m going to gather some this week (so long as I don’t get shouted at by the residents’ association president) and make them into an ice-cream.
Anyway, as soon as Easter passes I’ll be picking, pickling and preserving in earnest. I’m going to be making a series of Youtube short films as well, so I’ll be nice and busy. The first one I’ve got planned is of a foraged Indian Thali , as follows:
Dandelion poori
Borage raita
Gorse Biryani
Sag Paneer (with nettles and hedge mustard)
