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

Saturday 17th February. Headingley, Leeds. 7pm start. 4 Wild Seasons is a year long project exploring the seasonal flavours of the landscape through a series of wild food themed pop up dining experiences. 5 Courses. £40pp. Limited spaces available. To book email:  4wildseasons@gmail.com  or call 07899752447

I was honoured to be asked by Locavore magazine to do an interview with them for their online content of the magazine. That interview is here:  https://locavoremagazine.co/foragers-craig-worrall/  For those of you who haven't heard about Locavore magazine, it's only just released it's first publication, I've been lucky enough to read it via a pdf format and as my friend (and contributor to the first edition) Walter Lewis puts it "it oozes quality" and I wholeheartedly agree with him. I'll be subscribing to it at the end of this month. It's always tricky putting words down on paper, as once it's done and sent and published, it's done, I hope I do foraging, Locavore and myself justice 

I love lime pickle but I love my Japanese Quince pickle even more! Lime pickle is great, it smacks your taste buds all over the place and I like that, it's salty, sour, tart, citrusy and then those spices come in to play with that amazing heat toward to the end. So after last years Japanese Quince harvest (end October, early November) an idea struck me, why not make a pickle akin to lime pickle, quince are tart and have that sour, citrus appeal but with a more delicious attit ude, so I set about making one. After chopping and removing the seeds, I salted the quince to start a short fermentation process, I later added a range of spices and have left it alone ever since (well, not quite true, I have had a few sneak previews to taste how it's been getting along, who wouldn't and besides, I'm making it  :)  ). The initially hard quince have softened nicely and they have become beautifully infused with the spices while retaining that distinctive quince flavour and aroma. Fe...

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...