April. My favourite month for foraging. The anticipation of March is
over, and now we’re spoiled for choice; one of the best and easiest to
spot wild edible mushrooms, several great green vegetables, herbs, and
wild edible flowers are all at their best this month.
Whereas through February and March my top ten cover ten things that are
good, the choices from which they’re drawn are limited. Now, though,
it’s my ten absolute favourites from a bewildering array of tasty wild
edibles.
I hope you enjoy this list (and April foraging) as much as I’m going to
this month. We’re kicking off with my absolute favourite wild edible;
the humble and much overlooked St Georges mushroom, continuing via one
which might be technically illegal to cook (although I personally
consider it my civic duty to eat the accursed Japanese knotweed into
extinction), via some storming wild spring vegetables to finish with my
very favourite wild flower, the charming (and totally gastronomic)
cuckoo flower.
As before, this list isn’t exhaustive, and it’s
just my opinion. Many plants mentioned in February and March are still
good, and many more that I haven’t mentioned are still well worth
exploring.
1.St Georges Mushroom (Tricholoma gambosum)Traditionally
you can expect to see this mushroom from St. Georges day (April 23rd),
but I’ve picked it from the middle of April onwards. For me, it’s the
first really exciting mushroom of Spring. It’s wonderfully meaty,
tasty, and a very substantial mushroom; it can be 15cm across if you’re
very lucky. It grows in rings around the edges of fields, anywhere with
relatively undisturbed pasture, and it seems happiest near to trees.
It’s
really the only big white mushroom of the like in Spring. No volva, no
ring, white gills, cap and stem going pale cream with time. It’s got a
mealy smell, almost meaty.
It’s present from April through
till June in a good year, and it’s an extremely versatile mushroom.
Stewed with chicken it makes an unsurpassed chicken and mushroom pie.
It’s good in omelettes, cooked down for a pate, in pasta sauces, fried
in butter, and it dries well, so at the end of a long winter with few
mushrooms (if the blewits have let me down!) it’s a welcome way to
restore my dried stocks. Last year (2004) was a tremendous year for
this mushroom where I live; we picked basket loads, ate it nearly every
day, dried enough so we still have some, and we’ve never grown tired of
it.
You may find that the older, bigger specimens are too strong
in flavour for you; I’ve never had a problem with that, but if you do
then simply use them in smaller portions.
I have no hesitation in recommending this mushroom. I consider this the best wild mushroom to pick.
Pictures at:
http://www.agarics.org/DatabaseAction.jsp?recordName='St%20George%20Mushroom'
http://www.rogersmushrooms.com/gallery/DisplayBlock~bid~5697~gid~.asp
2.Japanese Knotweed (Fallopia japonica)
The almost ineradicable weed we all love to hate!
It
is illegal to move any part of this plant. It’s almost all
meristematic, which means that the bit of stem you move from one site
and accidentally drop can take root and become another whole dense
patch of light blocking, fast spreading, tarmac cracking nastiness. By
transporting any part of this plant you’re committing an offence. Be
warned!
This indestructable uber-triffid covers a large part of
the land area of the UK. It spreads by rhizomes in the ground at a
shocking rate, especially if there’s a bit of wet ground. My own
preferred solution to this problem would be to eat it…
If you’re
feeling experimental, cook it out in the field. Pick the young shoots
in April when they’re no more than a foot tall, slice off the leaves
and cook it down with sugar, like rhubarb (to which it is related).
It’s very tasty. I also make a Japanese knotweed wine which, after a
few months in the bottle, is really tasty.
The greens and young shoots are eaten as a vegetable in Japan. A quick Googling will reveal all sorts of uses for it.
Pictures at:
http://biology.clc.uc.edu/.../Japanese%20Knotweed.JPG
http://www.wildmanstevebrill.com/Plants.Folder/Knotweed.html
3. Nettle (Urtica dioica) You
all know what nettles look like, and probably that you can eat them.
The truth is that most people never try, being put off by the thought
of handling a horribly stinging plant. If you can get past that,
though, you're set for a real feast. Nettles are best young and tender,
so pick the young plants and the tops from older ones. You can make a
perfectly good string from those stems, so you don't want to be cooking
with them! Gather your nettles with care; wear gloves when picking and
preparing them or you'll regret it. Wash them, removing any bits of old
stem or any tough material, and then cook them through rather like
spinach, adding a little nutmeg. Or use them in soup. They're tasty,
and very nutritious.
Pictures at:
http://www.plant-identification.co.uk/skye/urticaceae/urtica-dioecia.htm
http://linnaeus.nrm.se/flora/di/urtica/urtic/urtidio4.jpg
4.Ground Elder (Aegopodium podagraria)What
did the Romans ever do for us? They introduced lots of umbellifers. Not
convinced? It was the Romans who brought us ground elder, Alexanders,
fennel and coriander to name but four!
Ground elder is the
blight of many gardeners. Can’t dig it out, glyphosate only sometimes
works, you’re basically stuck with hoeing it down over and over again
all year. My solution is to eat it, and keep eating it. It’s so good
that we already have a whole article on eating ground elder:
http://www.downsizer.net/.../Eat_Your_Way_to_Eradicating_a_Troublesome_Weed/
Pictures at:
http://www.atlas-roslin.pl/gatunki/Aegopodium_podagraria.htm
http://www.waldhang.de/0106037.html
5.Coltsfoot (Tussilago farfara)Don’t
go looking for the colts foot shaped leaves of this plant in April, you
won’t find many of them yet, and they taste bloody awful anyway. What
you want is the flowers.
When you find coltsfoot, in old
gravel pits, by rivers, by lakes and the like you might just find
loads. Huge swathes of golden yellow flowers by the water, taking up
the slack when the daffodils of early Spring are dying off. And when
you do it’s a really handy flower to have. Herbally (I don’t go in for
herbalism much, except in cases like this where it really, really
works) it’s a potent anti-tussive, so it’s handy to keep some dried for
making a herb tea to stop you coughing so much if you get a cold. But I
prefer a more direct approach; I soak them in vodka to achieve a
similar thing.
They make a cracking wine, and they’re also really pleasant in salads. They look and taste great.
Pictures at:
http://www.kulak.ac.be/.../klein_hoefblad.htm
http://www.toyen.uio.no/botanisk/nbf/plantefoto/Tussilago_farfara.htm
6.Wild garlic (Allium ursinum)Of
all the wild relatives of onion you’ll come across, this is the best.
The dark, glossy leaves of wild garlic grow plentifully in parks, on
riverbanks and in woodlands across most of Britain, and it tastes
something like hot, garlicy spring onions.
You can pick the
bulbs and use them, but I’ll urge you not to. A patch will survive the
leaves being picked but not the bulbs. I’d like to encourage you to try
this plant in salad, mixed with rocket,sorrel and lettuce it’s very
tasty. Or chop it fine with butter for a strong garlic butter, stuff it
under chicken skin when roasting, blend it into potato soup, etc.
There’s all sorts you can do with it.
The flowers are gorgeous;
use them like you would chive flowers. And the flower stems are like
thin stalks of garlic flavoured celery; I tend to chew on them when
walking in the woods in summer.
Pictures at:
http://www.kulak.ac.be/.../Daslook/
http://www.floralimages.co.uk/pic398.htm
7.Alexanders (Smyrnium olusatrum) Alexanders
are another umbellifer we can thank the Romans for introducing, they
brought it over as a green vegetable, and a superb one it is too. Find
it around the coast of much of Britain (being especially common from
Anglesey, down and around all the way to Norfolk), and also inland by
some roadsides and some waste places, where it can almost inexplicably
grow to the exclusion of everything else (for example, I know a place
in Cambridge where it smothers out nearly everything else). Pick the
young stems and steam them gently, perhaps coating in butter when
they're done. Or chop them and add them with stock vegetables in a
stew, and they'll impart a delicate, herby flavour unlike anything
else. I personally like to use them to flavour seafood dishes; try
adding the chopped leaves to moules mariniere, or dressing crab salads
with them. Like any umbellifer, you could do yourself serious harm if
you were to mistake one of the poisonous wild relatives of alexanders
for the real thing. But don't let that worry you too much, once you get
to know the texture and smell you'll have no trouble knowing the real
thing.
By April it’s looking to flower, so try to select
plants that haven’t started flowering yet (you oughtn’t have any
trouble) If you can’t then stick to using alexanders as a flavouring or
herb.
Pictures at:
http://www.bioimages.org.uk/HTML/T1059.HTM
http://www.floralimages.co.uk/pic3c9.htm
8.Fennel (Foeniculum vulgare)There
was a time, not so long ago, that fennel was considered an exotic
vegetable. So space age that it’s the one being fed into a weird
cooking machine by Luke's aunt in Star Wars. And this always struck me
as odd, because it’s been cultivated for so very long, and it’s a
really common wild plant.
What you’ll find in the wild is leafy,
green, luscious and every bit as tasty as the bulb or Florentine fennel
you can buy. And yes, it does look, taste and smell just like
cultivated fennel. It steams well as a green vegetable, it’s good raw,
and as an accompaniment for fish it’s well worth exploring. At this
time of year you’ll find leafy, almost foamy green fennel whereas later
on you can explore the possibilities the flowers and seeds provide for
you. More on that later in the year.
Pictures at:
http://www.ocagcomm.com/weeds_slide2.asp
http://www.heorot.dk/wyrt-fennel.jpg
9.Sorrel (Rumex acetosa) Possibly
the finest, and certainly the trendiest, of all of the wild greens
you'll find. It's a marvellous plant, related to the dock, rhubarb and
the evil Japanese knotweed, and it's common throughout most of the
British Isles in hedgerows and woodlands. It forms dense green rosettes
of leaves, and has a sharp, almost lemony flavour. Use it raw in salad,
add it to potato soup, use it in sauces with meat or fish, in fact
anywhere that its sharp flavour can be appreciated it'll find a place
in your kitchen. In April you'll find that sorrel is growing like mad
and throwing forth its first tentative flower stalks of the year; the
tight green growth of February and the straggliness of March has become
a big mass of luscious green leaves. Pick it now for salad, eat it in
sandwiches with cream cheese and tomatoes, cook it in a sauce for
fish... The uses for sorrel are almost endless, as French cooks have
known for years (like the French, I have no understanding of why most
Brits don’t eat a lot more sorrel!).
Until you get the nose
for picking sorrel, be very careful; the young leaves of ladies
fingers, a deadly poisonous plant, can look somewhat similar to an
untrained eye. Keep your eyes open for your first season looking at
such plants, by midsummer you'll be happily eating sorrel.
Pictures at:
http://www.bioimages.org.uk/HTML/P3/P34743.HTM
http://honeybee.helsinki.fi/.../kasvit_tiet_ens/rumex_acetosa.htm
10.Cuckoo Flower (Cardamine pratensis)This
is my favourite wild flower, and it’s an absolute hands down
gobsmackingly pretty wild plant. It’s the only thing that can, for me,
trump wild violets (which I also adore). I can’t really say why, it’s a
fairly unassuming little brassica, but the colour of it’s little
pinkish purple flowers, and the little spears of them that appear over
fenland, by river banks and lakes all over the UK in April I find
totally charming. There’s a lot of variation in the flower colour;
purply-pink through to white, but they’re all quite enchanting.
There’s
not a lot to this plant, a little rosette of leaves and a flower stem
in the mud. But do try eating it; the flowers are so pretty in a salad,
and the leaves are surprisingly hot and pungent. Not one to eat on its
own, but blended with other leaves it’s most tasty.
Pictures at:
http://cabd0.tripod.com/cabsmushroompage/id11.html
http://www.fungoceva.it/erbe_ceb/cardamina_pratensis.htm
|
