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Wild Foods — Free Ways to Add Variety to Your Plate

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by: gwydion
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Word Count: 440

Often those who advocate wild foods and wild ingredients are seen as either slightly worthy or slightly weird. It can frequently be perceived that such proponents of wild foods want you to whole-heartedly and completely change your lifestyle to eating nothing but wild foods.

You are welcome to do this, if you so desire, but that's definitely not the point of the wild food movement at all. It's partly about increasing people's views of nature and the natural world. After all, if you naturally add wild ingredients to your overall larder then you will appreciate nature and what it can do for your. Nature no longer becomes an enemy or something you have to fight with. Rather the wild world becomes an extension of your environment. Something useful that you can dip into to extend the types of food available to you.

You can build a meal based on nothing but wild foods. Or, you can go into the wild and source things like young linden (lime tree) leaves or wild herbs for use in a salad or recipe as a simple addition.

Here I present two wild food dishes. A salad that includes almost nothing but wild-sourced foods and a main course includes a few wild-sourced ingredients as additions to he list of overall ingredients.

Salad of Wild Leaves

Ingredients
Ivy-leaved toadflax leaves 
Wild chervil
 Hairy Bittercress 
Wild Lamb's Lettuce 
Wood Sorrel  
100g chopped cos lettuce 
100g rocket

Method:
You will need to collect about 200g of the wild leaves. Was them well then toss all the leaves together and dress with a classic vinaigrette.

Spicy Chicken and Goosegrass

Ingredients:
600g chicken breasts, cubed
 4 garlic cloves, minced
 2 small onions, sliced
 butter or oil for frying
 1/2 tsp ground ginger
 1/2 tsp ground cumin
 1/2 tsp ground coriander seeds
 1/2 tsp cayenne pepper
1/2 tsp freshly-milled black pepper
1/2 tsp garam masala
 4 whole cloves
 10 tomatoes, chopped
200g goosegrass leaves
 salt, to taste

Method:
Add the chicken and a little oil to a pan and stir-fry until ncely browned. Remove the meat from the pan and set aside. Now add a little more oil to the pan and use this to gently fry the onion and garlic for a few minutes before adding the spices (except the garam masala). Fry for a few minutes more then return the chicken to the pan along with the tomatoes and about 400ml water.

Season with salt then bring the mixture to a boil. Reduce to a very low simmer, cover and continue cooking for about 40 minues, stirring occasionally to prevent sticking. Raise the heat at the end of this time and stir-in the goosegrass. Continue cooking until the sauce thickens and most of the liquid has evapourated. Remove from the heat, add the garam masala and serve on a bed of rice.

About the Author

Dyfed Lloyd Evans has particular passion for incorporating wild-sourced ingredients into modern cooking. He has created a Guide to Wild Foods and Recipes and you can find many more recipes incorporating wild ingredients in his Recipes for Wild Foods pages, all are part of the Celtnet Recipes and Cooking site.

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