Sweet chestnuts

Thinking that the fungi season would be up and running by now, I've been out skulking in the woods with my basket, only to be disappointed.

However a mammoth find of sweet chestnuts (Castanea sativa) was an unexpected bonus. I've collected about 3 Kg, which I've stored in a cool, dampish corner to delay the shrivelling process. Historically chestnuts were an important food crop throughout much of southern Europe, having spread westwards from Asia Minor most likely with the Romans. In some places they still are: on Corsica I've sampled chestnut bread, cakes, liqueur and even beer.

I normally don't bother with these in the UK, since mostly they're too small to be worth the effort of scoring and peeling. However this year, they're swollen and plump. I cut a small cross on the curved side with a sharp knife, shove them in an old colander and roast them on the embers of the wood-burning stove for 20 minutes or so. Delicious.

Boletus erythropus

The season for this is normally late summer to early autumn, however I found one this evening while out hunting for kindling wood.

Most people don't pick this mushroom, since it has the red pores which are normally associated with the (possibly deadly) poisonous Boletus satanas, and the (merely) poisonous Boletus satanoides. However I do, as I suspect do all the commercial fungi collectors who pick the stuff which ends up as dried 'porcini' at Waitrose at £5 for 100g.

Boletus erythropus causes stomach upsets when raw but is edible - and good - when cooked. Hence the reason why shop-bought dried mushrooms must always be thoroughly cooked, since you really don't know what's been sneaked in there under the guise of 'cep'.

A glut of cucumbers

The cucumber vine in the greenhouse has gone mad: every day there are two or three more on it. There being only so much tsatziki or Greek salad one can eat, I've started turning them into cucumber vodka:

Peel two large cukes (or don't if you want an attractive green colour to the vodka for cocktails). Slice in half and remove the seeds. Chop into 1 inch chunks and fill a large clean jar. Cover with vodka and leave in a dark cupboard for five days. Strain with a coffee filter and bottle.

For cocktails, you could just add it it to Pimm's, however I'm experimenting with lychee and rose martinis. Or just on its own, from the freezer.

MORE TH>N 'Green' Car Insurance

Oh dear.

From the MORE TH>N website:

"We have created MORE TH>N Green Wheels Insurance to give our customers the opportunity to take responsibility for their carbon 'tyre-print'. It helps people to understand how their driving style affects the environment by giving them access to information such as their rate of acceleration and braking, the number of short car journeys they take and how long they leave their car idling.

This exciting new eco friendly car insurance product is part of our commitment to the Together campaign which believes that, by offering customers positive environmental choices, large companies can make a real difference in the fight against climate change - you can find out more at www.together.com."

Sanctimonious greenwash bollocks. Anyone concerned about fuel consumption will already know that 'changing into the highest gear as soon as you can', 'driving slowly', and 'not leaving the car idling' saves fuel.

Anyone not so positioned really doesn't care.

However, to get really sniffy, as a marketing 'idea', it is about five years behind the curve. My guess is that someone at Royal & SunAlliance had a box of gizmos they had no use for.

Give-stuff-you-don't-need-away: now that's green.

Wildlife in this heat...

...must be desperate for water. I've given the greenhouse a good hosing, thinking of this little chap who lives there in a mossy nook:

Butterflies, bees and birds also appreciate shallow dishes of water provided for them / wet ground where the sprinklers are on.


Not exactly 'green' I know, but what the hell - some things just enrich us.

Mean and green

The Lotus Elise. My one indulgence.

Hand-built in Norfolk, there's no carbon footprint in manufacturing, just an (albeit six-toed) human one.

The car returns 35mpg on combined urban/non-urban use since it is incredibly light: the aluminium bonded chassis, fibreglass monocoque body and 1.8 litre 2ZZ-GE metal matrix composite engine result in a kerb weight of less than 850 Kg.

Plus there are no silly add-ons like cupholders or air-conditioning (just take the roof off) to add weight and hamper the blistering performance: 0 to 60 in 4.9 seconds.

Ferrari performance for a quarter of the price and none of the running costs or social stigma (people let you out at junctions in an Elise). What's not to like?

The car scrappage scheme

What's the point of this? I can't believe it is ever 'greener' to scrap an older car in favour of a new one, given the carbon footprint of modern automated manufacturing methods.

Especially if classics like this (sadly not mine) are scrapped in favour of a Kia Picanto:

Barbecue Season

LOL. "Now that BBQ weather's here" is something I often read. Ermmm... if it isn't actually tipping down with rain, I'm barbecueing.

Getting the thing started is simple with scrunched up newspaper / a few sheets torn out of the phone book - useful since telephone directories can't otherwise be recycled - topped with dry twigs and a few pieces of lumpwood charcoal:

When the flames are leaping, cover in more charcoal, or just wood.

Wood takes longer to develop the required ember base for cooking, but the results are well worth it - beechwood is my favourite for flavour. Choose similarly sized pieces so that they all reach the ember stage at the same time.

Once I've finished cooking and the embers are dying down, I then close all the vents and throw on some fresh beech twigs, followed by a piece of trout or salmon. Whack on the lid for 20 minutes until it's cooked through, and the resulting hot 'smoked' fish will be succulent, flavoursome and enough to convert even the most ardent fish hater.

Which wild food books?

I get asked quite a lot about which books to use for wild food indentification. Here are my bibles:

1. Roger Phillips Mushrooms and other fungi of Great Britain and Europe, ISBN 03302644193. This is the definitive work in my view, the big selling point being the visual key to the main families on pages 10 - 12. It's now out of print, however used copies do appear on Amazon from time to time. Bag one if you can.

2. Roger Phillips Wild Food, ISBN 0330280694. A bit of a 'period piece' this, however the recipe for beech leaf noyau on page 67 is worth the cover price alone.

3. Richard Mabey Food for Free, ISBN-10:0002201593. The seminal work, and more useful for plant identification than Phillips' Wild Food in my opinion, however the two complement one another rather nicely.

4. Antonio Carluccio Complete Mushroom Book, ISBN 1844001636. Actually too far from 'complete' to ever use for identification, however it is a useful source of recipe ideas and inspiration.

Mean cuisine

I'm impressed. Since I switched to using a slow cooker and electric steamer (from an electric fan oven and hob), my domestic electricity consumption has halved.

That's without deploying any other energy-saving measures, since I already turn off lights in rooms which aren't being used, chargers once finished charging, and nothing is ever left on standby.

Researching further, the difference in energy consumption between the various types of appliances is quite scary:

0.79 kW/hour for a typical oven, compared with 0.15 kW/hour for the slow cooker.

1.2kW/hour for a halogen hob, compared with 0.9 kW/hour for the steamer (the steamer also cooks faster).

At a cost of £11.97 for the slow cooker (Asda), and £14.65 for the steamer (Tesco), my recent acquisitions have paid for themselves within a month. Plus I've had some very tasty stews, soups and vegetables.

Wood cutting

Spring is the time to get out there cutting, splitting and storing firewood, so that this:














Can be transformed next winter into this:

As a newbie to 'wood power' I've learned the hard way about which types of wood are worth bothering with and which are not, with much fiddling around trying to light wet petrol station logs on bitterly cold winter nights.

However, I've recently been given a chainsaw and can now cut my own firewood. In theory - fekkin' dangerous things, chainsaws. Agricultural colleges sometimes offer training sessions for the occasional / domestic chainsaw user. If not, the two-day NPTC 'CS30' Chainsaw Maintenance and Cross-cutting course covers everything and more.

Armed with a chainsaw (and the appropriate training and equipment), I'd go out and cut, in order of preference:

1. Birch
This burns well green or seasoned, and gives off a lovely smell. Since birch burns fast and hot, it is useful for mixing with slower burning woods such as beech or oak, especially if these aren't fully seasoned. (Or crap petrol station logs.)

2. Ash
The King of firewood. Burns well green or seasoned, although it lacks the aroma of birch I love so much. There's also lots of it about - much of the devastation caused by the great storm in 1987 has since been filled by ash seedlings grown up in their natural environment.

3. Beech / oak
Burns slowly with an intense heat. These woods need to be well seasoned, ie. cut, split and dry stored for at least a year before using - two years if cut in spring / summer. Save any chips from the splitting to flavour the BBQ.

4. Fruit woods
Cherry, apple, plum, pear. These smell wonderful but need to be well seasoned, else they'll smoke the house out. (I know.)

5. Sycamore / elm
These need to be well seasoned, particularly elm which has a high water content, however they burn slowly with a steady heat. These are common garden trees which require thinning, or felling if the elm has succumbed to disease. If ever I see a tree surgeon working on one, I make a point of asking if I can have whatever wood they've sawn.

6. Everything else
Virtually any wood will burn if well seasoned, or on top of a good bed of hot embers. A few lumps of smokeless coal or charcoal can help things along. I use candle drippings, or the unburned wax residue in tea lights to get the fire going if need be, rather than buy firelighters.

999. Coniferous woods
Larch, pine, spruce. Last and least. The red net bags typically found in petrol stations, at least in the South East. Avoid these like the plague unless your woodburner is just for decoration. Often wet, they're difficult to light, and don't produce much except an oily smoke that will clog up the chimney. They also spit like fury, and therefore shouldn't be used in an open fireplace without a fireguard.

Dogshit Park

So what do you do with a fungi find from a location that's used as a doggy toilet, or else otherwise contaminated? Or if you find an example of a prized species that's well past its best?

You could simply leave the fungi to decay in their natural habitat, however I pick them anyway and seed them in more desirable locations - not least because next season, I'll know where to look.

Picking doesn't harm the fungi since what's on the surface is only the fruit: the main body of the plant - the cobwebby mycelium - being underground.

Here's an Agaricus bitorquis I found today in Epsom town centre's notorious 'Dogshit Park':

Agaricus bitorquis is good to eat - it's the wild parent of the cultivated Portabello mushroom.




However this particular example was riddled with worms and not something I'd consider eating, quite apart from where I found it. I've chopped it up and scattered it around the garden, hoping for rain.

Hyacinths for the soul

Out on the North Downs Way, I stumbled across a bluebell wood. Bluebells aren't to be eaten, since all parts of the plant are poisonous, but they reminded me of the famous poem:

If of thy mortal goods thou art bereft,
And from thy slender store two loaves alone to thee are left,
Sell one, and with the dole
Buy hyacinths to feed thy soul.

I'm surprised at how little-used the North Downs Way is. Once past the car parks and lookout point at Box Hill, I've walked for hours and not seen another (human) soul.

Pizza

Truly poverty-spec food, this. Personally I resent paying £5+ for supermarket pizza - albeit hand-crafted by virgins over ley lines - when I can make better myself for a quarter of the cost.

The dough (based on Jamie Oliver's recipe)

Ingredients (makes 3 pizza bases for two):

500g strong white bread flour or Tipo ‘00’ flour
1/2 level tablespoon fine sea salt
1 x 7g sachet of dried yeast
1/2 tablespoon golden caster sugar
2 tablespoons extra virgin olive oil
325ml lukewarm water

Method:

Sieve the flour and salt on to a clean work surface and make a well in the middle. In a jug, mix the yeast, sugar and olive oil into the water and leave for a few minutes, then pour into the well. Using a fork, bring the flour in gradually from the sides and swirl it into the liquid. Keep mixing, drawing larger amounts of flour in, and when it all starts to come together, work the rest of the flour in with your clean, flour-dusted hands. Knead until you have a smooth, springy dough, adding a dusting more of flour if the dough is too sticky.

Place the ball of dough in a lightly oiled bowl, cover the bowl with a damp cloth and place in a warm room for about an hour until the dough has doubled in size. Then, remove the dough to a flour-dusted surface and knead it around a bit to push the air out with your hands – this is called knocking back the dough. You can either use it immediately, or keep it, wrapped in clingfilm, in the fridge (or freezer) until required.

If using straight away, roll out the dough with a flour-dusted rolling pin. Then, add toppings: some of my favourites are mushrooms, goat's cheese, salami and red onions. Top this off with grated mozzarella and parmesan, and sling the whole thing into a hot oven for 10 minutes. Eat. Enjoy.

Dryad's saddle

An unexpected fungi find while out hunting for kindling wood - it's the size of a tractor seat.


I've picked the smaller, younger one at the top. Fried in butter with a sauce of garlic, sour cream and dill, that did nicely for tonight's supper.

Beech leaves

These can be used as salad leaves when very young and tender, though I think they're rather bitter to eat on their own. I'd use them to bulk up a rocket salad, or liven up otherwise dull greens.

I've picked a load to make into noyau - an old French liqueur recipe from Roger Phillips' book Wild Food:

Beech Leaf Noyau

Ingredients:

Young beech leaves
1 bottle gin
225g white sugar
1 glass brandy

Method:

Collect young beech leaves and strip them off their twigs. Half-fill a 2-litre preserving jar with the leaves and pour on the gin. Seal the container and steep the leaves for 3 weeks, before straining them off. Boil the sugar in 300ml of water and add this to the gin with a large glass of brandy. Bottle.

I haven't tried this before, but have been itching to give it a go from the moment I first heard about it. Although I do hope it tastes better than it sounds, else I've wasted a bottle of gin. (Which would be criminal.)

St George's mushrooms

I need to find some of these and fast. My credibility as a wild food enthusiast is at stake here.

Annoyingly - in suburban Surrey - I never have.

Allegedly St George's can first appear up to a week later than 23 April.

I live in hope :-)

Ramsons (wild garlic)

Wild garlic is everywhere on the North Downs Way at the moment. Some people think these leaves are bitter when cooked and best used raw instead of chives.

I disagree. Although these work well as a garnish for potato salad - or as a gourmet leaf to feed captive snails ;-) they're also very good in an oriental stir fry or Thai curry.

Spring / summer heating

I can't justify using the gas-fired £100-a-month central heating in April, and there are no logs for the woodburner to be had anywhere.

As a child I remember my parents' house being full of candles in winter, and the surprising amount of heat these generated.

Good quality tealights are £5 for 100 from Waitrose and burn for 4 hours each. 10 or so dotted about the place beautifully light a draughty old barn after dark, and heat it in the process for 50p.

Compared with the cost of running the central heating for 4 hours = £3. A no-brainer.

However, since paraffin wax is a by-product of crude oil, candles aren't particularly 'green' - though every Grand Designs eco-hovel seems to have them in profusion... Tut, tut.

Vegetable wax candles are available, but while they're 10 x the price of the paraffin wax variety, I shan't be buying them. Hence the title of this blog.

Wild primroses

Primrose flowers are edible and can be used in salads. Or, dipped in egg white then icing sugar and left to dry, as cake decorations. Personally, I leave them as I think they're too pretty to eat.

European Peasant Cookery

A great book for the parsimonious: Elisabeth Luard's bible of kitchen thrift derives from traditions where the only part of an animal that's ever wasted is the moo / oink / squawk.

It also ticks the 'seasonal' and 'local' food boxes for those who are concerned about such things, since the essence of peasant cooking is making the best use of whatever ingredients are to hand.

Nettles

Yes, the horrible 'stingers' you were pushed into by bullies as a child. (Or at least I was.)

Nettles are rich in iron and can be used in exactly the same way as spinach. Lovely they are, as nettle soup or as a substitute for spinach in the Greek spanakopita. Pick the tops from March to the end of May, after which they become bitter and rather 'insecty'.

Nettle soup

My version of this is a combination of Roger Phillips' and Hugh Fearnley-Whittingstall's approaches to the subject. I hope they won't mind.

Ingredients (for two):

2 celery sticks, finely diced
1 large carrot, finely diced
1 large onion, finely chopped
1 clove garlic, crushed
A colander full of nettle tops (picked with gloves on), washed
1 large floury potato, diced
A handful of cooked rice
250ml of chicken or vegetable stock
Small carton of single cream
Salt, pepper
Nutmeg

Method:

Chop celery, carrot, onion, garlic and potato and sweat in butter. Add nettle tops, stock and simmer until the potato is soft. Add rice (for thickening). Blend. Season with salt and pepper and the merest scraping of nutmeg (it's easy to overdo the nutmeg, but a hint really enhances the flavour). Add cream. Eat.

This soup is delicious hot or cold with Ramsons (wild garlic leaves) chopped and sprinkled over.

Spanakopita (Greek feta and 'spinach' pie)

This recipe is based on Anthony Worrall-Thompson's version, with added input from my friend Vic's Greek father, which is that if you don't squeeze out all the water from the spinach, nettles or whatever greenery you're using, you'll get a 'soggy bottom' to your pie. Funny how all 'celeb' chefs forget to mention the need for this - makes you wonder whether they've ever actually cooked the dish themselves. :-|

Ingredients (for four):

400g nettle tops, picked with gloves on and washed
1 tablespoon chopped parsley (or more)
Small bunch spring onions, chopped
225g onion, finely chopped
300g feta cheese, crumbled
Salt and freshly ground black pepper to taste
Olive oil, for frying onions and brushing filo
6 thin filo pastry sheets


Method:

1. Preheat the oven to 180C/250F/Gas 4.
2. Steam the nettle tops for 5 mins or so until wilted, squeeze out the excess water in a cloth and chop finely.
3. For the filling, in a large bowl, combine the nettles, parsley and spring onions.
4. In a pan, gently fry the onion until golden. Add to the nettle mix.
5. Now add the feta and mix well. Season.
6. For the spanakopita, grease a shallow baking dish with oil and line with three of the filo sheets, placing one on top of the other. Brush each sheet separately.
7. Put the filling over the pastry and spread evenly. Cover with the remaining filo. Brush the top with oil and, with the point of a sharp knife, trace the crust into square pieces.
8. Bake for 40 minutes. When golden brown, remove and leave to cool. Cut and serve with a tomato salad.

Also goes beautifully with tzatziki and a lamb (or rabbit) kebab.

Snails

The commonly eaten French snail is no different from what's found in our own gardens.

Thankfully, we've had a bit of rain these past few days and there are lots of snails on the move. If not, I give the garden a good dousing with water just before dark, wait an hour and go out with a torch. Walls, fences and around the gas meter and garden tap are all good places to look.

Snails can't be eaten right away, on the basis that you don't know what they've eaten. Hence the need to feed them up and then starve them to get rid of whatever's in their intestinal tract.

Presently, I have a dozen or so of Surrey's finest in their own snail Hilton where they can lounge about, gorge on gourmet leaves and otherwise chew the fat, blissfully unaware of my plans for their future: I'm thinking a gutsy stew of chick peas, chorizo, garlic, tomatoes, paprika and coriander would suit.

Meanwhile, some pictures...

Snail Hilton

A washing up bowl with vine leaves. Vine leaves are what the Burgundians - the innovators of snail cuisine - use to feed theirs:
















Ensuring they don't check out too early

I've fashioned a lid from a table, and weighted it down with some cans:

After 5 days of gorging I'll starve them for a further 3 days, give them a wash and throw them into boiling salted water for 10 minutes. They then need to be winkled out of their shells with a pin, tossed with a bit of salt, and rinsed. After this they're ready to use.

All this may seem like a faff, but I think the results are worth it. I only ever collect wild food that is worth eating in its own right: if anything needs expensive ingredients adding, or complex cooking then I can't be arsed with it.

For me, the idea behind foraging is to collect gourmet treats such as wild mushrooms to to use as 'taste adders'; or free direct substitutes such as nettle tops to use in place of spinach. Snails are somewhere between the two.

Done badly (as I've had them in the UK) snails can be rubbery and tasteless. Done well, in a garlicky tomato stew with chorizo and chickpeas, they're meaty and very flavoursome.

The results

Yum yum.















The recipe

Ingredients:

Snails, prepared as above
2 small chorizo sausages, diced
1 large onion, sliced
4 cloves garlic, crushed
1 chilli, chopped
1 can chick peas
2 cans chopped tomatoes
Splash of red wine
Pinch of smoked paprika
Chopped coriander for serving

Method:

Fry the chorizo in a non-stick pan over a low heat until it's slightly browned and the fat is slightly rendered. Soften the onions and garlic in the rendered fat, and throw this and everything else into a slow cooker for 8 hours. Serve with the chopped coriander stirred in, and hunks of crusty bread to mop up the juices.