If foraging conjures up images of bimbling along tranquil hedgerows, gently picking berries with a gentle sun on your back, then picking rock samphire may disabuse you of the notion. Though it does occasionally grow on the foreshore, its preferred home, clinging to precipitous coastal cliffs, makes for anything but bucolic harvesting.
Orache doesn’t always get good reviews in foraging guidebooks, but I rate the varieties I encounter very highly – both as a salad leaf when young, and as a spinach substitute when mature. The tender young leaves, to my palate, are wonderfully sweet with nutty overtones and a hint of salt…
One of the very best ways to taste the vibrant shoots, leaves, and flowers of spring is in wild sushi. Many of the fresh, zinging flavours and health-giving properties of green plants such as wild garlic and sea kale are lost in cooking. Rolling them in nori seaweed sheets with sticky rice and serving with condiments is easy, great fun and makes for the most spectacular finger-food I could imagine.
The flavours and textures of some wild foods can be challenging to our modern palettes. We have got used to the easy sweetness of tame vegetables, while importing piquant spices from abroad to make them more exciting…
One of the great pleasures of foraging is discovering exciting flavours in the common and innocuous-looking plants around us. Sea arrowgrass never fails to raise squeals of surprise and delight when we encounter it on my guided coastal walks.