From Tree to Table : Urban Foraging in London
Cat Byers |
As a dedicated city-dweller who even finds Kew Gardens ‘a bit too green', my idea of urban foraging is raking through a Tesco bargain bin.
Foraging brings to mind idyllic scenes of picking blackberries off branches in a summertime Laurie Lee daydream, which is about as far from my sooty, smoky, instant-noodles-for-dinner existence as you can get. Somewhere in my mind I can't help but continually mistake it for ‘dumpster diving' too. Fortunately, chef and expert forager Caroline Davey is determined to help me embrace my inner cavewoman. This back-to-basics way of finding ingredients has become a culinary trend in recent years, with Noma in Copenhagen leading the way and the rest of us scrabbling behind. Rustic, foraged restaurant menus and recipes are becoming much more popular as the backlash against supermarket prices and environmental concerns grow. London, it would appear, is a hot-spot for wild food too. Despite our attempts to beat nature into submission, recent research suggests that there are over 200 species of edible plants growing wild here. Caroline, who once worked as an ecological consultant and specialised in botany, gives us some advice to get started on winter foraging.What to look for:

Tips for first timers:

- Start with species that are easy to identify like elderflowers, nettles blackberries and once you have created some great things to eat you can build up the confidence to move onto slightly more unusual things.
- Only pick things you have a 100% positive identification for. There are plants and fungi out there that can kill you ,so it's important that you don't take any chances.
- Buy yourself a wild flower identification guide and keep it in your bag so that wherever you go you can start to identify plants. The hardest part of foraging is plant identification and it takes lots of practice and repetition to get it right.
- Start foraging in your own back garden! You don't have to travel miles to forage; you will find edible plants on your street, in your garden and in your local park.
- Follow a responsible foraging code. It is illegal to take rare plants listed under the Wildlife and Countryside Act 1981. Only take very common plants such as nettles, alexanders and sorrel so that you won't be responsible for depleting plant stocks. Don't take the whole plant, but leave more than half of it to grow back.
- Do not trespass to forage for wild food. Either get the landowner's permission or stick to public footpaths.
Getting involved
