Once again the gods were looking after us last weekend. The weather forecast for last weekend was torrential, so when we had clear skies and baking hot sunshine we were pretty chuffed to say the least.
Last week I foraged chanterelles, parasols, jelly ear fungus, black mustard leaves, alexanders leaves, sorrel, wood sorrel, navelwort, limpets, laver seaweed, fool's watercress, watercress, wild fennel, hazelnuts, rock samphire, pignuts, blackberries, elderberries, haws, rosehips, sloes, burdock roots, sea buckthorn berries, wild chervil, dandelion leaves, wild cabbage, sea beet, chickweed, mallow leaves, hedge bedstraw, mallow flowers, smooth sow thistle, mugwort, wild carrot, silverweed roots and nasturtium flowers.
It all got eaten by our hungry foragers, along with plenty of wild venison, Boscawen-noon pigeon, rabbit and Newlyn mackerel.
Matt came down from Flinty Red https://www.flintyred.co.uk/ in Bristol with Tara https://www.tarastable.co.uk/ to cook for the weekend with the help of Hannah from Willow in Totnes and two volunteers, Simon & Denise from New Zealand.
We had 17 foragers this time (the largest group we've had so far, and this really is the max).
It was a great weekend and a culinary journey for the food centred being. We ate and ate our way through Matt's creations with dishes such as black pudding with laver seaweed, rabbit with gnocchi, venison with wild cabbage and sea beet, limpet bruschetta, pigeon with chanterelles, hot chinese style rabbit salad with burdock, sea buckthorn berry cake, carragheen pannacotta with elderberries and so it went on and on….
We all had a rather marvellous time, the hedgerow cocktails flowed gently, followed by a torrent of wine and live folk music played by our resident fiddler, Frank and trusty regular mandolin player, Hadrian. xxx