Edible Leeds - Wild Food and Foraging Courses

A short midweek forage in Leeds. We will explore a range of in season edible, useful and interesting wild ingredients such as; flowers, seeds, greens and hopefully, some summer fungi.

Learn how to safely identify and use these ingredients in a variety of styles including; cooking, fermenting (including wild natural yeast fermentation), infusing, drying and creating spice blends etc...

Walk starts at 6pm and finishes at 8.30pm.
Wild tasters & drinks included. Adults £15. Children free.

To book email: edible.leeds@gmail.com

Location and other info will be emailed out to participants on confirmation of booking and on the weekend prior to the event.

Happy foraging until then.

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…

Following on from the successful Anglesey Forage Weekend of 2017, I'll be joining forces once
again with my friend and fellow foraging tutor/enthusiast Jesper to deliver yet another memorable weekend of coastal and island foraging. This year we are offering the opportunity of a limited number of early bird tickets, these will only be available until the end of June (read on for those details)...

The course will be held on the weekend of the, 14th & 15th July, 2018. This course will cover various aspects of coastal island foraging and wild foods: seaweed, coastal plants, salt marsh succulents, shellfish, sea fishing & (hopefully) summer fungi.

We only accommodate up to 12 people on each day of the weekend & we are offering 6 early bird tickets for either the Saturday, the Sunday or for the whole weekend. See below for prices which are based on a per person basis:

Saturday:  Full Price £130. Early Bird Price £110.
Sunday:    Full Price £100. Early Bird Price £85.
Weeken…

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…

I recently spent a fantastic 3 days on Islay, Scotland, courtesy of
Bruichladdich & The Botanist Gin, as part of their International Foragers Summit.
This gathering brought foragers from afar including; South Africa, Germany, US & the UK. We foraged, explored, drank, laughed, cooked, ate, discussed, felt and sensed this beautiful isle as much as we could in the time allocated - we did pretty well too!
Here's a dish I created using mackerel caught by us all literally hours before, the cockles were foraged the previous day and the dish, as with everything else that wee, was shared by all that evening as we got merrily blotted. Dehydrated Velvet Horn accompanied this - imagine the most amazing 'wotsit' you've ever tasted yet oceanic flavoured....

Ingredients:
Fresh Mackerel (filleted/de-boned)
Fresh Cockles (cooked/shells removed), 5 mins in a hot pan will cook them.

Pickling Liquor:
Apple Cider Vinegar,
Onion,
Sweet Cicely,
Ground Ivy,
Carrageen,
Elderflower,
Lemon…