You do not have to wander far in Cumbria to find an abundance of free, wild food as MasterChef 2019 winner Irini Tzortzoglou found when she introduced family and friends to a professional forager
What is the point of stinging nettles? Anyone who has suffered the pain and rash of angry, white weals on their skin on being stung, not to mention the continuous tingling that follows, knows there is little to endear them. They are ubiquitous, will spread through your flower borders and, once they have taken hold, are hard to get rid off sending out a mass of equally angry yellow roots.
Speak to Jim Parums, however, and he has only good things to say about Urtica dioica. “Nettles are so versatile and one of my favourite plants. They’re incredibly delicious, available pretty much all year round and so easy to find.
“Once cooked, frozen or fermented, you can put them in anything in place of spinach like eggs Florentine, curries, pasta sauces and they will give you far more superior flavour and, you name it, they’ve got it nutritionally. It’s reductive to compare them to spinach because they are so much more interesting and so much better for you.”
Nettle leaves are higher in iron than spinach, contain around three times as much vitamin C and are also high in calcium, magnesium, vitamin A and minerals as well as being higher in their antioxidant effect.
To give them their full due, they are also enjoyed by caterpillars of the small tortoiseshell and peacock butterflies among others, ladybirds and aphids, while birds like their seeds in the autumn.
There is one major problem though: their sting. Acknowledging they are under used, Jim says: “I think we would eat much more of them if they didn’t sting. But they are a ‘cut and come again’ vegetable and there’s not really any excuse why we don’t eat them more.”
For foraging beginners, stinging nettles are a good place to start because they are easy to identify, although he has encountered people who would not recognise them.
Education is a major focus of Forage Box, the business Jim founded in 2020. He is from, and has been based in, south Manchester but is in the process of moving with his young family to Kendal. His parents live in north Cumbria and he operates foraging workshops and walks in the county from bases including Bassenthwaite Lake Station, around Rydal and Chesters by the River, in Langdale. Customers have included National Trust, Alpkit, in Keswick and Ambleside, and The Farmer’s Arms, at Lowick.
Most recently, Jim teamed up with 2019 MasterChef champion and Cumbria Life columnist Irini Tzortzoglou to lead a family forage followed by a feast incorporating some of the flowers and foliage picked on a walk on the Heaning Estate, near Windermere.
Irini discovered Jim because she wanted to learn about how to forage safely and find plentiful, natural ingredients in the lanes and woods around her home near Cartmel. “I saw his workshops online and foraging has always fascinated me. Wild greens were the mainstay of my intake as a child and I have fond memories going out with the women of the village to collect snails in the early hours of the day when the first rains came, wild asparagus with my father and mushrooms with my brother,” she explains.
“In the UK wild greens often tend to be used more like garnishes but there are so many I am not familiar with. While I have many books on the subject, my ideal scenario would be to go out and learn with a forager like Jim at least once a month.”
Foraging has become something of a dirty word of late, tarnished by commercial harvesters, trespassers, trendy types and others who take too much of the wrong species from the wrong places.
Social media has become a hotbed of comment and criticism, but Jim can also attest to fairly regular disapproval from people who accost him on the ground, as it were. When it is done in a friendly way he is happy to explain, debate, answer questions and gently probe back, usually finding that people have little knowledge of the law and, more importantly, the nuances of foraging with nature and the ethics by which foragers like Jim operate.
Foraging is, of course, nothing new, and you don’t even have to look as far back as the original hunter gatherers. During wartime rationing, children would seek ‘sweets’ in the hedgerows but over the years it had become less of a norm as people became suspicious about the use of pesticides, hedgerows disappeared and fears that species were at risk and should be left alone. There are still threats undoubtedly – climate change, urban sprawl, recreation and habitat loss for other reasons – but at the same time people have increasingly wanted to reconnect with nature.
Research in 2021 by clothing brand TOG 24 showed that almost 75 per cent of adults were keen to forage wild food and a nearly 320 per cent increase has been reported in online searches for ‘how to forage’ over a ten-year period between September 2013 and August 2023.
Jim grew up among nature playing in woods close to his childhood home. He was inspired by his granny’s love of finding wild mushrooms and quickly learned about the safety and edibility of fungi.
He left Manchester aged 18 to study electronic engineering at university then, deciding it was not the career for him, went into hospitality and worked as a butler-chef in the homes of high-profile individuals.
“If you like food and you like nature at the intersect on the Venn diagram is foraging,” he says.
Forage Box has evolved with its wild food subscription boxes and Wild Deli among notable projects as it has developed, all based around its motto of: Always Wild. Always Sustainable. Always Delicious. “We are proud that the company has grown without compromising on these three elements,” he adds.
For Jim, foraging is both his passion and his business and he takes his responsibilities – legal, ethical and educational – seriously, whether clients want to forage on a Sunday morning walk or have a seven-hour immersive experience. He is supported by around 20 freelance foragers who operate to the same ethical standards as him.
“There’s a reason people enjoy foraging, it’s because they want to be outside, to be tactile with nature, touching it, smelling it, tasting it. Even if they don’t remember anything I’ve taught them about the plants we see they will have spent three or four hours outside and that is good for them,” he says.
“It makes me both happy and sad that people are nostalgic about foraging. For some people it’s almost like a refresher course and I’m humbled if people say ‘this is what we used to do when we were kids’ or ‘this is how we used to eat that’. It’s passing down knowledge and that’s important.
“Whether they are retirees, people wanting to entertain or educate their kids or young professionals connecting with nature, it fills my heart with joy that people want to do it.”
He was flattered that Irini contacted him and delighted to find so much to forage just yards from Heaning’s Big House. There are said to be around 400,000 plant species in the world, half of which are edible. “We usually run out of time rather than run out of things to find,” he says.
“Foraging is hyper seasonal and some plants have such a short window that they can be at their best one week and gone the next. The seasons change gradually but distinctly so spring is all about green and growth, summer is flowers, autumn is fruit and in winter it’s the allium family and Alexanders, which is a Roman import. All the seasons have their merits, and through them all there is fungi.
“I know people really like to forage for mushrooms and I like the anticipation and the surprise that mushroom foraging gives, but I also yearn for spring to come after the long slog of winter because it’s the start of longer days and you can spend more time outside. There is a correlation then with what you can find.”
At Heaning, with its gardens, meadows, fields, arboretum and hedgerows, there is an abundance the minute you walk out of the door, especially in spring. Armed with only baskets and a couple of plastic tubs, Irini’s group sets out only to stop almost immediately before reaching the end of the parking area.
“We’ve already passed three or four edibles,” says Jim, “but we’re going to start with the milder flavours and build up to the strongest.” A short walk, almost always within sight of the house, takes the visitors on a track through a meadow, left along a lane, over a wall into a small woodland and back up to the house, participants harvesting a very controlled amount of ingredients as they walked. They included:
Linden or lime tree – its young, smaller leaves can be used in salads. “The flowers are sherbety and the seeds taste like chocolate,” says Jim. “You want to go for the newer leaves because the older they are the more astringent they taste.”
Ribwort plantain – a ubiquitous plant found in grassland and field edges and, in this case, the meadow. The leaf and flower bud are edible. “The leaves are identifiable by the rib up the back. As well as being edible they contain antihistamine so can be used on stings, unlike dock leaves which are an old wives’ tale, although you can use those as a vine leaf alternative.”
The black flower buds have a mushroom flavour – the plant is sometimes called ‘poor man’s mushroom’ – so can be used in a similar way. While here, Jim warns against consuming buttercup, which are poisonous and can cause seizures, vomiting and diarrhoea.
Cuckoo flower (also known as lady’s smock or milkmaids) – the pretty, pale mauve flowers are edible with a mild white cabbage flavour and make an ideal garnish; the leaves, which grow further down the stem, taste like wasabi.
Ground elder – this is not to be confused with elderberry or elderflower, which are edible cooked, but the leaves contain cyanide so should be avoided. Ground elder is a common plant that spreads easily and is one of the umbellifer family that includes carrot, celery, fennel and parsley. Critically, it looks similar to hemlock and hemlock water-dropwort. “Be dead careful,” says Jim. Ground elder is identifiable for its hairless stems (but so is hemlock) whose shape feels like a celery stick. Ground elder has a small number of large leaves at the top of its stem, and, once picked, has a distinctive carrot smell. The leaves taste like flat leaf parsley, the stems like celery. Hemlock, on the other hand, has leaves that look more like carrot tops, appearing more fern-like. Other plants look similar, so cautious, informed foraging is vital.
Cow parsley – another umbellifer, it is also similar to hemlock but with two distinct differences: it has very fine hairs at the join of stems and has long, thin, purple veins (hemlock is speckled purple). Cow parsley smells like chervil (hemlock has an unpleasant, mousey, acrid smell) and has a citrussy, herby flavour.
Wild garlic – you are likely to smell this before you see it as it is pungent in woodlands in spring. Despite its name it shouldn’t be cooked in the same way as regular garlic, rather added at the end of a dish like a herb. The flowers also make a great garnish, initially tasting sweet before evolving into a more obviously garlic, mustard flavour.
Garlic mustard – another very common plant that can grow tall in shady spots in woodlands and hedgerows, it is a member of the brassica family with a pointy, heart-shaped shaped leaf. While the leaf’s flavour is reminiscent of paracetamol, the stem is like broccoli.
Common vetch – a member of the legume family, the tendrils on the end of the compound leaves are like sweet peashoots. It has pretty, purple flowers, which can also be used as garnish.
Nettles – Jim offers a nettle-specific forage lasting four hours, which includes instruction on making the leaves safe to eat – never raw (in salads or smoothies for instance), always cooked, frozen or fermented since these processes break down the hairs. He also advises choosing carefully where you pick them since as well as absorbing all the goodness in soil they also absorb metals and other nasties. While picking them is done at your own risk, he advises: “Show them who’s boss, don’t dither but don’t be a nettle ninja either. Go in swiftly and confidently and pull off the top two sets of leaves from underneath. Then, squash the sting contraption by folding the leaves in and roll them into a ball of mush.” They can be popped on pizza or in soup, and also cooked with sugar and water to make a syrup.
Common sorrel – it is identifiable for its sagittate leaves that have little lobes at the bottom near the stem that sit up like rabbit’s ears. Although they look unremarkable, they offer a sharp, acidic hit in salads or as garnish.
Rowan – the berries can be eaten cooked and are traditionally used to make jellies. The flowers can be eaten or infused in drinks and taste like almonds.
Bistort – a “northern powerhouse” plant whose leaves look like dock leaves but are cleaner and neater. The bottom of the leaves form a right angle with thin ‘leftovers’ down the stem. They can be used as an alternative to spinach, while the stem is citrussy. Bistort is traditionally used in Easter Ledge Pudding, a traditional Cumbrian dish cooked around Lent and Easter and usually served with roast lamb. In summer the plant grows pretty, pale pink, bottle brush flowers.
Sweet cicely – it looks just like cow parsley, but there is no mistaking its fennel fragrance and aniseed flavour.
THE FOOD
Back at base, while others were out foraging, Irini was cooking up a feast for their return.
Ozlem Warren’s vegetarian Turkish cuisine book, Sebze, provided two recipes: Garlicky courgettes and carrots with walnuts and yoghurt, to which Jim added a garnish of common vetch shoots, and Orchard Salad of green pepper, tomato, cucumber and pomegranate with pomegranate molasses.
Irini had sourced lamb from Lakeland Farm Visitor Centre, just over the fields from the Heaning estate at Ings, and slow roasted it before serving with a mint, parsley and coriander sauce with an added garnish of wild garlic flowers and fresh ground elder leaf.
She drizzled a pizza of three cheeses and pine nuts with wild garlic oil she had made, and served another with goats cheese and asparagus. With the baskets of freshly foraged leaves close by, some diners added garlic mustard.
Irini’s heritage came in Cretan cheese pies – served alongside foraged, spinach-like bistort leaves with their lemon flavour stems – and kataifi or wrapped spinach pies.
Dessert was a burnt Basque cheesecake (the recipe given to her by the foodie mayor of Banyalbufar, in Majorca, during a recent trip) and the remainder of John’s birthday cake of lemon sponge, lemon curd and raspberries by Martin Frickel.
Jim adds: “As the cheesecake was loaded with juicy strawberries, it made sense to serve it with the common sorrel that we gathered, which has that sharp, apple skin/rhubarb flavour. Common sorrel is a great way to liven up those mid-summer flavours of rhubarb, strawberries or elderflower.
“I also sneaked some sweet cicely flowers on the birthday cake for that intense anise/liquorice flavour. Raspberries, in particular, work with the naturally sweet stems and flowers of the sweet cicely.”
THE FORAGING
Foraging the four Fs – fruit, flowers, fungi, and foliage – should only be done with care, consideration, for your own consumption – and within the law.
All wild plants are protected under the Wildlife and Countryside Act (1981) and some species are specially protected against picking, uprooting, damage and sale.
It is illegal to dig up or remove a plant (including algae, lichens and fungi) from the land on which it is growing without permission from the landowner or occupier. Even with permission, you should never pull a wild plant out by the roots or slice it off at the base, as some commercial foragers do.
Only take leaves, flowers or berries in moderation and where the plant will be stimulated to continue growing. Never take more than you plan to consume.
Only forage plants or from trees that are in abundance, never when they are scarce. If a species is in short supply in a particular area, leave it for wildlife.
Be aware that some non-native and invasive species are subject to strict controls and it is illegal to collect or propagate them.
Never eat anything unless you are 100 per cent certain that you have identified it correctly. It could be rare and protected, inedible or even deadly poisonous. If in doubt, do not touch it or, as Jim says, never munch on hunch!
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