Edible Leeds - Wild Food Foraging Courses and 4 Wild Seasons Pop Up Dining Events

Saturday 21st: Forage Anglesey. 10am - 6/7pm.  If you fancy a day of wild food adventures on Anglesey, complete with a wild and coastal inspired feast to round the day off beautifully, read on... The plan for the day is: . Explore saltmarsh and sand dunes for delectable coastal succulents and other seasonal green's . Explore wild coastal heath/meadow for those elusive and tasty wild mushrooms . Squeeze in an hour of mackerel fishing (bbq'd mackerel!) . Check out some groovy and versatile seaweeds . Get distracted by other tasty and versatile ingredients while doing the rounds Once we've finished with exploring, learning and gathering, we will retire to a suitable coastal location, create a delicious meal, relax and socialise. The weather is currently looking fabulous btw! I'll bring a range of wild ferments, pickles and drinks from my wild food larder for inclusion in the feast and provide a couple of pre-prepared dishes. I'm keeping participant numbers low for maxi...

Wild Food & Foraging Courses... Hi. My first wild food and foraging courses of 2024 will be taking place on the weekend of 16th/17th March. I hope you can join me... Saturday 16th: Birch: Food, Medicine, Magic & Myth. 10am - 2pm. Leeds   Birch trees were highly respected and held in high-esteem all across the northern hemisphere for millennia, providing our ancestors with a myriad of useful and seasonal resources in both a practical and spiritual sense. This course will explore the multitude of potential resources Birch trees have to offer and hopefully, herald a return to the respectful and intimate relationships we once had with Birch (and wider nature). As a group we will get practical, theoretical and magical with; sap extraction & syrup making, pollen, catkins, edible & medicinal fungi, fire lighting, storage containers, birch tar, withies, habitat, ecology and of course the magic and spirit of Birch. Samples and tasters and a wild spring-time soup are included...

 If you would like to learn more about the natural, medicinal aspects of wild mushrooms for    maintaining, balancing, optimising and enhancing personal health and/or that of others, then this course is for you.  This course will focus on a select range of wild mushrooms that can be incorporated into our seasonal diets and also turned into more potent and powerful forms of natural medicine. Participants will learn how to: . Safely identify a range of specific medicinal mushrooms . Mindfully harvest, prepare and store them . Create simple tinctures . Create double extraction tinctures . Create concentrated extract powders (with long shelf-life compatibility) . Incorporate into diets in very simple ways . Learn about the proven and potential health benefits of those mushrooms We will also explore the theme of micro-dosing with psychedelic and psychoactive medicinal mushrooms. Simple refreshments will also be provided on the day.. Price: £55pp Booking essential:...

Wild Garlic Pesto is one of the easiest and tastiest, spring time recipe, with a wide range of kitchen applications. I find that the freshest, youngest, most vibrant and tender, early season leaves, make the tastiest and punchiest pesto. It can be stirred into freshly cooked pasta, gnocchi and mashed potato, used as a filling for homemade chicken or pheasant kiev's, used as a simple dip akin to hummus and popped on top of oven baked oysters, cheeses and cold meats. The fresh pesto can be popped into clean jars and stored in the fridge for up to 1 week (adding extra oil to the jar will prevent the surface drying out) or, frozen in suitable containers (use within 1 year).  Hygiene Hygiene and freshness are essential when making and storing wild garlic pesto. Not wishing to deter or scare people: there is a potential risk of botulism when preserving any ingredient that grows in soil, therefore, you MUST only use the very freshest, cleanest, most blemish free, wild garlic. You MUS...

Seaweeds, those most amazing of oceanic organisms, are a ' bit' like wild mushrooms, in the sense that they are continually undergoing, extensive, scientific research. Despite this, there is still much that marine biologists and scientists just aren't entirely certain of. Issues such as deciding which genera to place them in and the ongoing mysteries regarding aspects of reproductive cycles, seem to be the most common. For those reading this who have dabbled with and, are familiar with the intricacies and subtle frustrations encountered within mycology, will no doubt love seaweeds, they are the 'fungi of the ocean realm'.  If you have an interest in food, cookery, nature and spending quality time outdoors, you'll love the fascinating, delicious and wonderful world, of seaweeds.  Did You Know? The scientific name, ' Porphyra'',  is derived from a Greek word meaning 'purple-red colour' and although these colours are representative, I feel the ...

I first came across Vin de Noix in the autumn of 2019, courtesy of my good friend and chef, Josh Whitehead. For me, Vin de Noix, is an alchemical stroke of liquid genius! It is wonderfully aromatic, delightfully complex in taste and worthy of all the time, effort and patience required, to create and eventually, crack open, share and sup with friends, loved ones and pop up diners. Originating from France, Vin de Noix is the cousin of the Italian, Nocino and the Spanish, Ratafia (all are made with, unripe, green walnuts). Prior to being introduced to Vin de Noix, I had only ever made Nocino and really struggled to get my taste buds around it's strong, over-powering, oily and bitter flavour. Since discovering VDN, my preference definitely flows in the direction of the French version. I also envisage more experimentations with Nocino - a palatable version is required! Perhaps VDN is that version... The three different versions of VdN that I've made, have all been subtly unique. It...

As some of you will know, spring heralds the return of the wild alliums; Wild Garlic, 3 Cornered Leek, Few Flowered Leek, Chives, Rosy Garlic, Crow Garlic and others. Wild Alliums, in particular, the first 3 species from the above list, receive much attention from me as they are super prolific in areas that I frequently forage. Not only are they super abundant, they are exceptionally tasty and extremely versatile, providing plenty opportunity for a raft of dishes and preserves. Annual Allium tasks that keep me busy during spring are the creating of; pesto's, flavoured oils, lacto-fermentations, protein curds, flavoured butters, pickles and flavoured salts (using smoked and dehydrated leaves). I also love creating simple and tasty dishes from the fresh leaves, unopened flower heads, open flowers and seeds, in raw form and cooked. So far this season (April 2021), I've made and crafted;  2.5kg Wild Garlic Pesto 1.5kg Few Flowered Leek Pesto 1kg Lacto-fermented Few Flowered L...

  💫 SPECIAL ANNOUNCEMENT 💫  On Sunday, 2nd October, I'll be teaming up once more with Italian duo, Maurizio & Cinzia Bocchi, of the multi-award winning restaurant, La Locanda, to celebrate Sapore d'Autunno - A Taste of Autumn. 💫 This will be a unique opportunity to enjoy and experience an Autumn foraging session, a 5 course evening dinner and of course, the fantastic wild and cultivated produce that Lancashire has to offer.  💫 Each dish will celebrate and incorporate the very best produce and wild foraged ingredients that Lancashire has to offer. 💫 More information regarding the 2 options available on the day and to book tickets is available via the following link:  https://lalocanda.co.uk/sapore-dautunno-autumn-foraging/ 💫 You can read about our previous event, Sapore d'Estate - A Taste of Summer, here:  https://edible-leeds.blogspot.com/2022/07/sapori-destate-taste-of-summer.html 💫 We look forward to welcoming you.

Sunday, the 11th of July, saw 4 Wild Seasons teami up once again with our two, very lovely, generous, food and drink passionate Italian friends, Maurizio & Cinzia of La Locanda.  The first time we worked together, fusing traditional Italian foods with wild and local seasonal produce from Yorkshire & Lancashire, to create our unique style of multi-course dining, was in late November 2021. On that occasion, we served our unique food-fusion to 26 dinner guests at 'Convivio Selvaggio' which translates to 'Friendly, Lively & Social', an occasion much required after the never-before-experienced and lengthy lockdowns, the nations populace had endured.  Our celebration of summer began with a breakfast of Italian style, sweet/savoury pastries, with a wild meadowsweet infused strawberry jam and choice of tea or coffee. We then began our 2.5 hour foraging adventure on the Lancashire coast, where I lovingly revealed the wild, edible delights of the saltmarsh, mudflat...

I have very fond memories of gathering Dandelion leaves as a child in order to feed them to my pet rabbits, of picking the full flowers and racing around the local park, arms outstretched, imagining myself an airplane and using my thumbs to flick the flowerhead missiles clasped tightly in my hands. I remember picking the furry looking, globe-shaped seed heads, taking a deep breath and then exhaling fiercely in an attempt to magically synchronise the number of exhales with the time of day and of peeling the hollow stems, to see how many thin strips I could reduce it to while occasionally touching the very tip of my tongue to the white sap and then recoiling in humour-fuelled-horror at the extremely bitter flavour: happy days! I hope those of you reading this remember your early memories with dandelion?   As I grew older, my attention turned to more pressing, age-related activities, mischief and social norms and I slowly began to forget those days of simple, innocent play and wo...

Mighty Oaks, from little acorns, do grow! And from those little acorns a range of superb, wild crafted products can be obtained, in this case, flour.  I've been intending to make acorn flour for several years now (it's currently 2017!), either time hasn't been on my side, acorns have been sparse, or I've just been so engrossed in other wild food experiments that my intentions just haven't come to fruition. A key factor that eventually led to me making acorn flour was my first ever tasting of acorn bread in December 2015. After attending the first ever Association of Foragers meet ( https://foragers-association.org/  ), myself and a friend met with another friend to hang out in Cornwall for a few days. On the very first morning, Chris who had been up since 4am, had baked a fresh loaf of acorn bread, he served up a couple of slices complete with a perfectly poached egg, lashings of shaved perigord truffle, wall penny-wort, truffle oil and seasoning, and it ble...