One of the things that I love about London is the easy access to relatively ‘wild’ (i.e. un-managed) areas from parts of the city that are wholly urban. We owe this, of course, to the existence of the green belt which, even as it allows me to scavenge for fresh, free food (see recipes below), jacks up my rents because demand for housing continues to far outstrip the supply of land. There’s no easy answer to this unless we’re willing to build ever-higher buildings within London proper, and for most developers that means building 1 & 2 bed flats, not the (relatively) affordable 3 & 4 bed flats that are really needed if we’re going to make London a place for people of all ages.
But that’s for a longer post on another day. In the meantime, pending a radical change in Britain’s use class laws, here are a few recipes for fruit and plants readily-available in your local marsh or heath.
All of these recipes have used ingredients from Hackney Marsh and Hampstead Heath.
The Ingredients
Nettles
Nettles should only be used when young. The advice that I found online suggested shoots no more than 1ft high, and even then you only want the last inch or so of plant, not the entire thing. Picking nettles is fairly straightforward if you have kitchen gloves (which work ok, though I got some stings) or gardening gloves (perfect), but I’d certainly not try it without some kind of hand protection. Unless you’re into that kind of thing.
Since they tend to grow in large patches, picking nettles is dead easy and you should be able to fill 2-3 carrier bags’ worth in under a half-hour. It’ll work a lot like spinach, so once you cook it you should expect the volume to fall rather dramatically.
Best time to pick nettles is around April when the shoots are young, though you may get some secondary growth later in the year.
Blackberries
Aside from figuring out the time of year and where to find them, there’s really nothing difficult about picking blackberries. However, I find life has fewer scratches if I wear hiking boots and jeans, and what I’d really like to find is one of those things that the bin men use to collect litter off the street since I could pull the more distant branches close enough to pick without subjecting myself to an attack from the blackberry bush.
Best time to pick blackberries seems to be late July (depending on weather) but there are often more to be found through late August.
Wild Garlic
Grows early in the summer and is readily identifiable by its smell. Look for large patches of small white flowers and vibrant green leaves. Easy to collect and easy to use as a ‘spicy’ green in a salad or anywhere else you’d like a bit of garlic flavour but not the full effect of a raw bulb.
The Recipes
Blackberry Liqueur
This is a nice little recipe to start your wild food work with, partly because it’s dead easy, but mostly because the output is alcoholic and so no one will notice or care if you screw it up. To be honest, aside from procuring a few containers and picking the berries it requires nothing more than a little bit of patience before you sample the output.
There are many recipes available online, but I particularly happened to like this one. In fact, I don’t think that it even requires the corn syrup — it seems to me that this would make the recipe far too sweet, while I’d like a liqueur that is a little more tart. So how’s it work?
For each portion (where 1 portion equals about 750ml.) you will need:
- 2 cups of blackberries
- 1 cup of sugar
- 1 cup of vodka (the stronger, the better)
- 1 cup of brandy (my first batch used Ukrainian cognac and I don’t think there was much difference)
- 1 teaspoon of lemon zest
- 1 tablespoon of lemon juice
Put the sugar and berries in your container and mash into a pulp. Let stand for an hour (it will turn a fantastic purple colour), then mix in the rest of the ingredients, seal the container, and leave for 2 or 3 weeks. Strain, put back in the container and leave for another 2 or 3 weeks.
Environmental Plus: if you buy your vodka, brandy, and sugar from your local off-license you could even try to claim that it was ‘locally sourced’…
Nettle Cannelloni
In this recipe I use nettles in place of spinach, but the instructions are exactly the same. This recipe is also wheat-free.
Ingredients are:
- About 2/3 of carrier bag of nettles
- 1 container of mascarpone cheese
- 1 to 1 & 1/2 teaspoons of nutmeg
- Salt and pepper to taste
- 6 eggs (beaten)
- Bit of water in the eggs to thin out the mix
- Tomato-based sauce of preference
- Parmesan cheese (about a cup’s worth — half for the mix, half on top when it goes in the oven)
You want to start by cooking down the nettles in a pot of boiling water since this destroys the formic acid (same as ants use) in the stingers. Cook until it’s a nice green and has softened up like cooked spinach. Try to use a pot with a ceramic inside so that the nettles don’t stain it. Mix the cooked nettles with the mascarpone cheese, 1/2 the Parmesan, and the nutmeg. Salt and pepper to taste. This is the ‘stuffing’, if you will.
Heat a frying pan over a medium heat, add some butter to keep the egg from sticking, and begin ladling small amounts of egg onto the pan. You want a nice, thin pancake- or crepe-type thing, and I find it handy to use a soup ladle for all of this: fill about 1/2 the ladle with the egg/water mixture, and then pour it slowly on to the frying pan, using the underside of the ladle to smooth out the pancake into something very thin. The first ones are usually a bit ugly, but you’ll figure it out and by the end will have a good 10-12 egg ‘cannelloni’ ready for stuffing.
Take the egg cannelloni, place a moderate amount of ‘stuffing’ on top, and then roll the cannelloni before transferring them to an oven-safe dish. Fill the dish, cover with the tomato sauce, then the rest of the Parmesan. Bake for about an hour at about 200ºC. Since everything is cooked already, the only thing you really need to worry about is it not being hot enough.
Nettle Soup
Two minutes in Google will turn up hundreds of nettle soup recipes. Who knew it was so popular? The basic idea is some onion and potato to give the soup a little heft, and then the nettles to give it a really crazy green colour and the ability to tell your guests “This is nettle you know?” when you serve it. Actually, it’s rather good, so the fact that it’s a lot cheaper than the equivalent spinach soup is just a big plus.
You’ll want one of those Braun-type hand blenders here too.
Ingredients are:
- Carrier bag’s worth of nettles
- 1 large onion
- 2-3 garlic cloves
- 2-3 potatoes
- Olive oil, butter, salt & pepper to taste
- Stock / stock cube
- Cream to taste (just before serving)
Wash the nettles and discard the stems, keeping only the leaves. Chop the potatoes, onion, and garlic, and saute with olive oil and butter until onion is soft and potato starting to brown. Add the nettles, cook very briefly, then add about 1l of water and stock. Cook for 10-15 minutes, until the potato is soft.
Use the hand blender to puree the soup to a nice even consistency. Add salt and pepper to taste. Maybe even some chilly pepper to spice it up a bit. It is now ready to serve, so just add the cream when you’re ready to go.
Food for Free
These are just a few recipes that I’ve worked out over the past year, but there are plenty of ways to go collecting with friends as part of a group. The Dalston Eastern Curve Garden seems to have a number of activities related to edible gardens and the last time I stopped by there it was being used as a meeting point for people going foraging in Hackney Marsh so they should have information about that too. There’s also the handy, backpack-sized Food for Free by Richard Mabey, which also comes in a heftier format for those who really want to know their stuff.
Anyway, the point of all this is that foraging is a great way to save money, explore London, and make tasty food with a minimal carbon footprint. So what are you waiting for?