Foraging Smoraging

Since I got back to the UK I’ve come across the (fairly) new foodie fad of foraging. I am undecided as to whether I consider this a wholesome weekend activity, a way of one-upping your friends (something being homemade just doesn’t cut to anymore, it has to have been painstakingly gathered from low hanging branches on footpaths that are most probably covered in dog piss), or in fact just plain theft!

Across the channel the French are no strangers to foraging. Indeed in a land where every pharmacist is trained in the art of deadly mushroom recognition it’s no surprise that most French countrysiders collect their ingredients from “the nature”. However, attitudes towards foraging in France are far from fashionable; this is your real “cuisine du grande-mere”. More suited to a rustic family setting with homemade blackberry jam or a warming soup of wild mushrooms.

Over here we seem to have moved away from this simplistic use of natural resources and towards Michelin starred foraging chefs (how do they find the time to scour the countryside for individual sprigs of wild garlic- should they not be concentrating on the days service?), and trendy foodies braying at dinner parties about their sauce a la mushrooms-we-found-growing-in-the-downstairs-loo.

I have absolutely no problem with the concept of foraging, I’ve even picked a blackberry in my time. I just don’t get how it’s become so pretentious. And more importantly often it doesn’t even look that tasty, when you can go to your supermarket and BUY delicious food, why would you try and eat things that look and taste gross. The word foraging grates on me, like it’s can only be called foraging if it’s going to be served in a wanky manner. You can book onto foraging tours in central London! What would you find except old chewing gum and discarded fag ends? Why would you do this? There's only one explanation - to look cool.

What’s not very cool however is being dead. Of which there is a high probability if you decide to forage and eat mushrooms with your clan of tweed clad pals without proper advice from a mushroom expert (or French pharmacist!).

There also seems to have been a rise in the number of wild items being foraged from our countryside that coincides with the increase of immigrants. More Eastern Europeans = less trout.  And also no-one told them that all those tasty swans belong to Queen. So what’s the difference between the Romanians noshing on the nation’s swans and Tarquin’s foraged medly of baby wild garlic and elderflower nettle juice? To be perfectly honest, at least the Romanians are taking it back to medieval tradition.

However, not all British foragers have lost their way. Forage fine foods (www.foragefinefoods.co.uk) have created a wonderful range of foraged products inspired by British tradition and our natural landscape. Pontack is a delicious sauce made with elderberries, cider vinegar, onions and spices. It tastes wonderfully different and there is something old fashioned and homely that comes through, maybe it’s because the recipe is over 300 years old. This is the kind of foraging I like, well done guys.

Forage Fine Foods forage a sign at the BBC Good Food Show Winter- Foragers through and  through.

And please don’t feel I’m against all the other foragers out there, hell I’ve already written about my own mushrooming experience with my own tweed clad pals. But with Michelin starred chefs, grandma’s, puffed up foodies and gypsys ransacking the British countryside for edible roots and twigs you’re got to admit foragers are quite an eclectic bunch.