Edible Leeds - Wild Food and Foraging Courses

A 5 course taste odyssey, featuring the harnessed yet untamed flavours of forest, field & hedgerow.

Local, seasonal  natural, different.

All foraged & unforaged ingredients will be ethically sourced & lovingly fermented, cured, smoked, pickled, prepped, cooked &  served.

All you need to experience this taste of Autumn is a sense of culinary adventure and: £45pp

To book email: edible.leeds@gmail.com

Hen Of The Woods aka Grifola frondosa, is a late summer to autumn featuring fungus.

It's generally found growing at the base of Oak trees, often older more mature specimens but not strictly so and less frequently found with Beech. Made up of numerous tiered brackets ranging in colour from dark grey/black/purple, to chestnut brown on the topside of the bracket and consisting of white/cream coloured undersides sporting firm sponge-like pores. These brackets hide the more bulky base and central section which is firm, solid and white, this too makes good eating and preserving. It has a desirable aroma of mild mushroom, nuttiness & earthiness, taste wise it rocks! Hen of the Woods is also known for its medicinal qualities, reportedly attracting, binding to and removing heavy metals from the human body - bet your doctor never told you that!
In Japan they go by the name of Maitake and you may hear them referred to as such even in the UK and the Japanese rate them very highly and eve…

The versatility of wild mushrooms astounds me! 
There are so many ways to make use of the seemingly vast array that grow in the UK. Freshly cooked, dehydrated, powdered, added to desserts, candied, infused in booze, fermented into wine, eaten raw in the woods as you gently amble along searching for your intended & unintended fungal quarry.

Medicinal applications too, are another aspect of wild fungi, species such as Chaga, Turkey Tail, Reishi, Hen of the Woods & Jelly Ear are all well documented for their medicinal qualities (oh how we are kept in the dark on this by the authorities & health services): food is medicine, medicine is food. 

This post isn't about delving into all of the above but is about a fantastic boozy infusion, created using 4 specific species (research, knowledge & experience will provide you with alternatives to this recipe). 
I'm upping this recipe due to various online requests in response to my recent post. The following drink is highly alco…

I love Mackerel! It's a much under-rated fish except by those who have sampled its excellent
culinary qualities. Mackerel are members of the tuna family and are always present in UK waters. Summer is the best time to fish for these oceanic beauties when they congregate in great shoals lured closer to shore by the warmer waters. They are tastiest when freshly caught - I find they don't respond well to long term storage - and given how easy they are to catch, you'd be crazy to miss out on the fun and fine feasting they offer. Mackerel will eat just about any bait you offer them and you only need 1 large or 2 small fish per person to satisfy appetites.
It's very easy to get carried away when fishing for them due to their ravenous appetites, so adhering to a strict mindful, ethical code of practice is essential - I've caught a full-house on many an occasion and quite often after my first cast: a full-house is when you are using mackerel feathers as bait, these feathers…

While exploring and playing on a delightful beach on Islay I managed to catch this lovely Pollack, total fluke catch really, was doing a demo cast for Liz of https://foragefinefoods.com when it took the lure. It weighed approx 1.5 - 1.75lb. I'd been thinking (and hoping) of catching and cooking a fair decent fish using this method for a while and I'm really glad I got to do so while on Islay and in such grand company.


After dispatching the fish at the beach, gutting and cleaning - all parts discarded became food for other creatures - it felt only fitting to clean it in the very waters it had come from.

Ingredients:
Pollack (or Pollock) Wild Thyme
Wild garlic
Sweet Cicely
Sorrel

Seaweed: 
Pepper dulse
Carrageen
Sea lettuce
Sea spaghetti
Kelp

Poaching liquor:
Plum Liquer
Alexander root tincture
5 Carrot bitters

Method: 
1) On returning to the hoose, 5 incisions were made on both sides of the fishes flanks and stuffed with wild thyme, crushed wild garlic stems, sweet ci…