Just popping off to the woods to pick up supper

[xchrom]

http://www.independent.co.uk/life-style/food-and-drink/news/just-popping-off-to-the-woods-to-pick-up-supper-2367794.html

Scores of boxes line forager Miles Irving's order room, the names scribbled on them forming a rollcall of top London restaurants: The Ivy; J Sheekey; Marcus Wareing; The Ledbury; Le Caprice; Roganic; Pollen Street Social; Hix Soho. Each is marked with orders for foraged goods – chickweed and sea aster, wild chervil and sea purslane – picked from the Kent countryside.

Today, the author of The Forager Handbook is hoping to gain a new client, Ashley Palmer-Watts, head chef at Heston Blumenthal's restaurant, Dinner.

Once seen as a hippie eccentricity, foraged food has boomed in popularity. Noma, in Copenhagen, named the world's best restaurant, serves ingredients from forests surrounding the Danish capital. In the UK, many of the best restaurants order foraged goods, or, in the case of Sat Bains's restaurant in Nottingham – which has a dish named after the postcode from where the ingredients were foraged – or David Everitt-Matthias's Le Champignon Sauvage in Cheltenham, the chefs pick their own. Online maps show foraging enthusiasts where to find the best wild fruit and berries.

Irving, 43, started his business in 2003, supplying restaurants with wild goods, but he first went foraging for mushrooms with his grandfather when he was six, learning about parasols and puffballs. He now knows more than 400 plants – the majority of them included in his book – growing wild.

[Marthe48]

1. Euell Gibbons

I read his books years ago, plus other plant books, and really enjoyed discovering edible wild plants. Gibbons books were entertaining as well and I recommend them not just for the information, but good reading.

I was happy to find 2 wild plants in my daughter's garden this year, that I had hoped to run across.

[xchrom]

2. You just gave me a flash back - haven't thought of him in years. Nt

[CoffeeCat]

3. I loved the parodies of Euell Gibbons...

...on the Carol Burnett show (I know I'm really dating myself here!).

"Ever eat a pine tree? Many parts are edible."

[xchrom]

4. i loved ol' euell & the parodies.

ah -- those were the days.

[LiberalEsto]

6. & the sly references to dandelion wine, etc

Euell taught foraging at my college for half a semester way back around 1970 but left to go "dry out".

[WhiteTara]

8. Wow! Euell Gibbons! Thanks for the memory! nt

[pipoman]

5. It would put my license in jeopardy to serve "foraged" products

in my restaurant. All foods must be source verified. I can buy from local growers but they must attest to certain standards of production, this couldn't be done if the plants were harvested from the wild.

[fasttense]

7. I love this.

We own a few acres here in east TN and I sell wildflower bouquets I collect from our land at a local Farmer's Market. I get some customers who are quite rude and point out that the flowers are nothing but weeds. But other customers are amazed that wildflowers are so beautiful and fragrant. I always say that wildflowers try harder.

You would be surprised at the beauty that grows for free around you. I collect flowers that smell like chocolate in late summer, french perfume in spring and jasmine in the fall. Have you ever smelled a thistle flower or milk weed? They have a better fragrance than roses.

It's truly amazing what nature provides for you. I understand now why owning some land was the way out of poverty for centuries.

[Sal Minella]

9. Re "weeds" --

Locally we have a low-growing "weed" that thrives in disturbed soil and seems to like concrete -- in summer the bright gold spills of flowers pour over the curbs along the road.

If these plants were difficult to grow, they'd be $8.95 per each at the local plant nursery.