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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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)
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