This amazing little seaweed packs an extraordinary flavour that you really have to taste to believe. I’ve fed it fresh to food lovers who reacted with such amazement, delight and determination to have more, that I expect they are now to be found living in coastal caves as ragged pepper dulse junky hermits…
This is the most striking and delicious of all our UK berries in my opinion – once you get over their nose-scrunching acidity! They are exceptionally good for you, being rammed with antioxidants and vitamin C. They are mostly found coastally, but are starting to be introduced – or introducing themselves – to more inland locations…
This is a delightful, easy-to-come-by plant that can be cooked like spinach, added to stir-fries etc, but is at its best raw. I love to employ its earthy flavour in winter salads with pickled fish, beetroot and elderberry vinegar, though it works well as a mild “bulker” with sharper-tasting leaves in spring…
While the feint flavour and slippery yet crunchy texture of jelly ear isn’t particularly esteemed in western cultures, they work well eastern cuisine – especially miso soups, stir-fry etc.
In bleak midwinter, when mycophogists start to look hungry and haunted by the paucity of pickings, velvet shank (Flamunilla velutipes) can put a glint back in their eye. It grows between November and March, when, in Scotland, there aren’t so many other mushrooms about…