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

Christmas is coming the goose is getting fat... I'm not having goose for Yule, among various things me and my guests will  be eating... Potted Pheasant 500g Pheasant Meat - Breast & Upper Thigh  150g Streaky Bacon 1 Onion 4 Garlic Cloves 500ml Crab Apple Wine or Medium Cider 500ml Game Stock 50g Wild Duck Fat or Goose Fat 4 Sprigs of Thyme 5 Points of Star Anise 30 Peppeercorns 1/2 Tsp Ground Mace 1/2 Tsp Ground Cloves 4 Bay Leaves Sea Salt Preheat oven to 120 degrees C. Finely chop the onion, grate the garlic and put into a pan with the wine, stock, sprigs of thyme & two bay leaves. Bring to boil and boil hard for 15 minutes. Remove from heat and leave to cool. Remove skin from pheasant and chop meat into very small pieces, do the same with the bacon and combine the two meats together in a bowl.  Using a pestle & mortar, grind the star anise & peppercorns. Add the ground mace, clove & 1/2 a tsp of sea salt, m...

Foraging doesn't get much more hardcore than climbing halfway up the side of a mountain in early winter in order to obtain your desired pickings and my recent trip to the Lake District saw me doing just that. My quarry, wild Juniper! My first encounter with wild Juniper was back in 2010, on the very same mountainside I recently visited in the Lake District. A low level mountain walk, coupled with introducing a friend to the delights of the Cumbrian Fells, resulted in the discovery of a small forest of Juniper trees, a pleasing encounter. I recall picking a small handful of those purple, black, aromatic berries, receiving many a spiked needle in my fingers while doing so, and eventually savouring their culinary attributes, mainly in the form of wild game dishes, hearty stews and the odd pickling experiment. Prior to that visit in 2010, my first encounter with Juniper was via a sketch in Monty Pythons' 'The Life of Brian', those of you who have seen the film will r...

I was mooching around the house today and felt the desire and need for comfort food. I popped out to check the freezer and discovered a bag of frozen Rosehips, a mix of our native hip, Canina Rosa aka the Dog Rose and the introduced Asian species, Rosa rugosa, the much plumper and tastier Japanese Rose. Keeping the Rosehips company was a bag of frozen Blackberries & knowing that I had a bag of beautiful apples, a mix of eaters and cookers (thank you Andrea Barbel) Blackberry & Apple Crumble with Creme Anglaise (posh and proper custard) sprang to mind, as did Rosehip Soup or Nyponsoppa as it's called in Sweden (I believe the Swedes thicken the soup using potato or other flour, I prefer not to). I prepared the crumble ingredients first, cooking the apple & blackberries in a little water to soften them slightly before making my crumble topping to adorn the fruit. After draining the cooked fruit I was left with a small amount of liquid, I considered turning that into a j...

My first encounter with Japanese Quince was as a child. There was a particular house, with a low-down brick wall bordering its garden and each year it would produce these small green fruits (as you will soon learn, I never actually saw them ripen!), I thought they were a strange species of lime and they were great for random acts of  mischief;  if only I'd known and if only I'd cared! Japanese Quince - Chaenomeles japonica - are one of several species of ornamental quince in the family, Rosaceae. They're much smaller than the pear shaped quince - Cydonia oblonga - that  grow on trees.   They're generally found randomly tucked away in suburban gardens or as border and screen plantings in and around municipal buildings and their grounds; though not solely and exclusively at these aforementioned locations. Regardless of where they reside, providing there is no risk of contamination, to stumble upon a decent crop of ripe n ready quince, is in my opinion an absolute...

The gang going fishing Part 1. Saturday 22nd July. There are many fantastic locations around the UK for foraging - I'll not delve into all those but I'll write a little something up at a later date - and whether you choose to start on your doorstep (always a good place) or, head to the woods, meadows and waste grounds, eventually & hopefully, you will explore the joys of coastal foraging. For me personally, all foraging has it's place. I generally avoid pinning myself to 'favourites', as all aspects of foraging have something to offer and (avoiding favouritism here), coastal has a certain air of 'special appeal' about it. I wrote some blurb for the introduction section of my coastal recipes page &you can read that here:  https://edible-leeds.blogspot.co.uk/p/coastal-recipes-fish-shellfish-seaweed.html Anglesey has an energy, allure and delight that just appeals to the visitor, whether you are there for adventure, relaxation, nature immersion...

Simply Spring! Delicious and nutritious all in approx 30 mins... Hogweed Soup w/ Few Flowered Leek Flower Heads & Primrose Blossoms - I added some wild garlic & few flowered leek foliage to the soup, alongside some other more familiar commercially available ingredients. There are some truly delicious spring herbs out there at the moment and they really do make meal times more divine. They taste far superior to the 'green' folks often think they taste. The myriad of different  flavour profiles is really quite staggering, whether you are eating them alone as a simple steamed, buttered dish, combining to make the most amazing raw salad you will ever taste or infusing with more commercial ingredients. These plants are the ancestors of each and every commercially grown fruit and vegetable you see and eat, there is a very deep, natural and ancestral link with them (it's nothing to be wary or cautious of and it's not hippy-dippy-far-out-shit either) and only when you ...