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.)
