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  Stinging nettle soup is a quintessentially English dish (Credit:
  Credit: IngridHS/Getty Images)
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A British feast from garden weeds

  For most, the idea of hunting and gathering is a thing of the past,
  however, the Covid-19 crisis is causing some to turn to the natural
  food resources that lie in their back gardens.
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    * By Jessica Vincent

  8 May 2020

  It was an unusually hot April morning in Colchester, England, and the
  fields, now in full bloom, were bursting in brilliant yellows, whites
  and purples. Armed with a wicker basket and David Squire’s book
  Foraging for Wild Foods, I scanned the Essex countryside for the
  ingredients to my first-ever foraging taster menu: stinging nettle
  soup; gnocchi with dandelion leaf pesto; wild garlic and stinging
  nettle ravioli; and, for dessert, dandelion flower cookies.

  [40]View image of The English countryside is a prime location for a
  culinary adventure (Credit: Credit: Peter Llewellyn/Getty Images)

  As a travel journalist who often writes about lesser-known foods, the
  part I miss most about travelling is trying some of the world’s most
  unusual ingredients. Before the Covid-19 lockdown, I enjoyed nothing
  more than feasting on sizzling stigghiola (chargrilled veal intestines)
  on a street food tour in Sicily, or learning how to prepare
  [41]ahuautle, an ancient ingredient once eaten by Aztec emperors, in
  Mexico City. For a short while, home-cooking [42]tacos al pastor or
  pasta alla norma satisfied my hunger for international flavours.

  But there was something missing, and that was the excitement of going
  out into the world in search of not just recipes, but a culinary
  adventure. And that’s when, for the first time since my childhood, I
  (re)discovered the art of British foraging.

  [43]View image of Author Jessica Vincent: "The earliest memory I have
  of foraging is picking wild blackberries with my grandmother" (Credit:
  Credit: Mypurgatoryyears/Getty Images)

  The earliest memory I have of foraging is picking wild blackberries
  with my grandmother. Our quest for England’s sweetest wild fruit led us
  to our local park in Banstead, Surrey, a small patch of green which,
  between August and October, would burst with swollen blackberries.
  Under strict instructions, I’d carefully manoeuvre my way around the
  thick, sharp brambles, my eyes scanning for the darkest and shiniest
  berries of them all. My grandmother had learned from her mother – who,
  as a young evacuee during World War Two, would forage wild fruits and
  plants as a supplement to the meagre food rations – that the plumper,
  darker berries were the sweetest. Those juicy crimson-purple morsels
  would often be turned into blackberry crumble, the perfect sweet finish
  to a Sunday roast dinner.

  The ritual of summer blackberry picking continued throughout my
  childhood. But, once I left home to start my adult life in London,
  foraging for wild foods became nothing more than a nostalgic memory.
  For the entirety of my university years, most of my ingredients – if
  not all – came plastic-wrapped from a supermarket in New Cross Gate. I
  didn’t know it at the time, but it would take a global pandemic – and a
  yearning to recreate my foodie adventures from around the world – for
  me to dust off my foraging basket and enjoy the beautiful Essex
  countryside that I’m lucky enough to have right on my doorstep.

  [44]View image of Author Jessica Vincent: "It would take a global
  pandemic... for me to dust off my foraging basket" (Credit: Credit:
  Jessica Vincent)

  Just a five-minute walk from my house, I spotted what I was after. I
  approached the fierce-looking weed – its leaves armed with thousands of
  needle-sharp hairs – with care. My foraging handbook referred to the
  plant as urtica dioica, but flashbacks of falling into a ditch and
  emerging with my arms and legs covered in a blistering rash when I was
  12 confirmed my suspicions: it was a stinging nettle. I put on my
  gloves and pinched the base of the stingers, gently detaching the
  leaves and placing them in the safety of my forager’s basket.

  You may also be interested in:
  • [45]The English vegetable picked by candlelight
  • [46]The renaissance of Northern Ireland’s dulse
  • [47]The forgotten food of the American South

  A curious dog-walker, intrigued at the sight of a young woman
  waist-deep in stinging nettles, asked me what I was doing from a safe
  distance. When I responded that I was foraging nettles for soup and
  ravioli, she scrunched her face in disapproval. “I’m not sure that
  sounds appetising,” she said, and continued on her way.

  [48]View image of Stinging nettle leaves are armed with needle-sharp
  hairs (Credit: Credit: SergiyMolchenko/Getty Images)

  The dog-walker’s response isn’t uncommon: foraging for wild foods,
  particularly weeds with a knack for piercing your skin and injecting it
  with burning chemicals, isn’t widespread in Britain nowadays. But there
  was a time in the UK when every person’s life depended on it.

  According to [49]Ray Mears’ Wild Food, 32 pieces of flint found in
  Pakefield, Suffolk, suggest that some of the world’s first
  hunter-gatherers roamed the lands of Britain in search of edible nuts,
  fruits and leaves as early as 700,000BC. Before the invention of
  farming and supermarkets, and at a time when virgin forests still
  covered most of the British Isles, our earliest ancestors used their
  razor-sharp knowledge of the land to sustain themselves entirely from
  the hundreds of British wild foods available to them. Chestnuts, crab
  apples, sloe berries and mushrooms, Mears says, were just some of their
  favourites.

  The introduction of small-scale cultivation around 13,000 years ago,
  however, was the beginning of the end of foraging in Britain. As more
  of our hunter-gatherer ancestors turned to the convenience of growing
  their own crops, foraging became far less crucial to their survival. By
  the time [50]Britain’s agricultural revolution reached its peak in the
  mid-18th Century, the ancient art of foraging was all but forgotten.

  A word of caution

  Wild plants in the UK are protected by the Wildlife and Countryside Act
  1981. For information on legal and sustainable foraging in Britain,
  visit the [51]Botanical Society of the British Isles.

  It would take two centuries and a world war for foraging to return en
  masse in Britain. As my great-grandmother experienced first-hand during
  World War Two, the British feared they would become vitamin deficient
  without imported fruits such as oranges. To combat this, [52]Britain’s
  Ministry of Health asked its citizens to collect rosehips (the fruit of
  wild roses) to boost their vitamin C intake. Some savvy Britons also
  found that acorns and dandelion root made for a decent coffee
  substitute and provided much-needed minerals such as iron and calcium.

  [53]View image of Yellow dandelion flower cookies can be sweetened with
  vanilla extract and honey (Credit: Credit: megatronservizi/Getty
  Images)

  I found my next ingredient – easily recognisable by its sunshine-yellow
  flower – just metres away from the stinging nettles. Undeterred by the
  dog-walker’s comment, I filled my wicker basket with dozens of
  dandelions, a common weed whose leaves, stem, flower and root have been
  used for their purported nutritional and medicinal value for thousands
  of years. The nearby wood, blanketed in lilac and cobalt-coloured
  bluebells, provided a bountiful supply of wild garlic, a delicate
  white-flowered plant whose fragrant leaf I planned to use to season my
  stinging nettle ravioli and dandelion pesto.

  My basket filled to the brim, I returned home to prepare my foraged
  feast. First to be served was the [54]stinging nettle soup, a
  quintessentially English dish that, [55]thanks to the discovery of
  3,000 year-old food bowls in the Cambridgeshire fens, as reported by
  the Guardian, can be dated to Britain’s Bronze Age. The nettle, which
  loses its sting as soon as it’s cooked, gave the soup a delicious
  earthy taste similar to cooked spinach, cabbage or kale. Inspired by
  Jamie Oliver’s recent [56]Instagram post, my other dishes took a fusion
  approach, combining ancient British ingredients with Italian
  techniques.

  [57]View image of Stinging nettle soup is a quintessentially English
  dish (Credit: Credit: IngridHS/Getty Images)

  The dandelion leaves were turned into “pesto” by blending them with
  cherry tomatoes, basil and ricotta, but the result had a bitter, leafy
  green flavour. However the nettles, which I pan-fried with butter,
  leeks and nutmeg, infused the ravioli with a rich, nutty taste
  reminiscent of wild mushrooms. With my bright yellow [58]dandelion
  flower cookies, sweetened with vanilla extract and honey, to finish, my
  foraged meal was complete, and, to my surprise, quite delicious.

  When I think of our British hunter-gatherer ancestors foraging the
  land, barefooted and armed with nothing but a rudimentary flint tool, I
  think of not how far we’ve come but of how much knowledge we’ve lost.
  There was a time where we’d distinguish an edible mushroom from a
  poisonous one with a quick glance or a sniff of the air. Now, few
  people would be able to identify an onion in a crop field.

  [59]View image of Wild garlic is a delicate white-flowered plant with a
  fragrant leaf (Credit: Credit: Peter Llewellyn/Getty Images)

  This phenomenon isn’t just happening in Britain: according to Mears,
  hunting and gathering will “cease to exist on Earth” within the next
  generation. But perhaps, just like in 1939, it would take another –
  albeit entirely different – crisis to once again prompt us to value the
  natural resources we each have in our backyards.

  Author Jessica Vincent foraged her ingredients on her permitted
  one-hour daily walk. The UK’s Covid-19 safety measures, including the
  practice of social distancing, were followed at all times. If you
  forage in your local area, be sure to do so responsibly.

  ---

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