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

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...

I imagine most of us were introduced to the delights of the seaside as children, which included many joyous and seemingly timeless hours of innocent fun, exploring rock-pools and coastal caves, racing imaginary horses (unicorns?) along and through the fringes of the incoming and outgoing tides, eating ice-cream and partially burying your favourite, yet annoying sibling and sculpting them into strange creations, adorned with various coastal debris & tucking into fish n chip dinners, complete with the random obligatory grains of sand that somehow find their way in no matter how carefully you attempt to fend off their incursions. I've always been fascinated by the coast and the majority of my childhood holidays were spent at various coastal locations around the UK: I consider myself very fortunate to have experienced those times. Our coastline, for the majority, is within easy reach and apparently, no-one in the UK lives more than 80 miles from some part of it. My fascination...

Japanese Quince is one of my autumn favourites and one I make a beeline for every year. You can read more about these delightfully scented,  mouth-puckering and fabulously versatile little fruits here:  https://edible-leeds.blogspot.com/2017/11/quince-quince-glorious-quince.html   Japanese Quince Jelly   This beautifully sharp, sweet and dreamily aromatic jelly is one of the creations that go into my JQ Knickerbocker Glory, it also works well spread on to warm toast or served alongside game meats, particularly wildfowl and is great added to sauces to provide an edge of acidity, sweetness and aromatic attitude. There are many other applications for this jelly, so get busy gathering, creating and playing... 1kg Japanese Quince 750g Golden Granulated Sugar Water Wash the fruits to remove any dirt and then place them whole in a large pan. Add water to cover, (approximately 800ml) and bring to the boil, once boiling, reduce heat and simmer until all the fruits split. Po...

Wild mushrooms have a special place in my heart. My wild food and foraging journey stemmed from an interest in them before branching out into plants and seaweeds. The 'silent hunt', as Antonio Carluccio so beautifully and aptly put it, is one of my favourite things. To find yourself at ease, wandering and treading gently, on the fringes of or deep within and beneath, the multi-layered, multi-coloured patchwork of woodland canopies, or in ancient meadows, in anticipation of the sometimes elusive, yet always magical and mysterious organisms that comprise the 5th kingdom is a pure delight. Fungi are truly fascinating, yet the great majority of the uk population have yet to discover just how awesome, intriguing, fascinating and tasty they can be. Most people think the best time of year for finding wild mushrooms is in the 'autumn' and, although there is some truth in this, it's not the whole truth. Spring, summer and winter can prove very fruitful (fung-ful) when it ...