Edible Leeds - Wild Food and Foraging Courses

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…

This recipe culminated after a days foraging with friends on Anglesey 2015. I'd never made a ceviche before and after finding myself with the perfect ingredients; seaweed, coastal greens, fish, I did :)
Ingredients: 
1 fresh Mackerel, filleted, de-boned and skinned       
Sea Noodles
Juice of 1/2 a Lime/Lemon/Orange (depending on fish size/quantity you may need to up this citrus juice amount)
Sea Arrow Grass
Sea Purslane
Pepper Dulse
Red Chilli
Hogweed
Pinch of Sugar (optional)

Method:
1) Put the prepared Mackerel into a bowl with the all the other ingredients except the Thongweed. Stir & place in fridge for 20 minutes.

2) Plate the thongweed, spoon on the ceviche mix, add a little fresh chopped pepper dulse & extra sea purslane (I let the natural pepperiness & saltiness provide the seasoning). S

3) Serve with some fresh, gently steamed, buttered sea beet shoots/flowering shoots.

Feel free to play with other ingredients, add, detract etc flavour it up according to your …

There's a good reason why our hunter-gatherer ancestors chose to locate themselves close to the ocean, especially in the summer months; once the inland plants of Spring have phased to seed their lovely leaves are past their best and their stems can become tough, woody and bitter (same for many tree specie leaves too) and the lovely flowers which start coming through just didn't contain enough nutrition to sustain their total energy requirements. Summer was the time to head to the coast. In true spirit and in keeping with the cycles of nature & hunter gatherers, I'll be doing just this.
Who doesn't like heading to the coast in the Summer, to explore, forage, cook, eat, paddle, swim and relax amid the splendour and beauty of the ocean? Coastal succulents & other plants are in their early stages and/or prime, flowers are swaying and displaying their colours, the marine algae are thriving, the fish are moving closer in to shore with the warmer waters and the weath…