Not long ago, on a lane in south London, a stranger engaged me in conversation. “What are you doing?” he asked, in tones of horror and morbid fascination. Evidently what I was doing was so curious and outlandish it overrode the usual vital protocol that forbids Londoners from ever addressing one another.
“I’m picking blackberries,” I replied.
This, apparently, did not satisfy him, or in any way explain why I was picking black things off a weed studded with thorns and inserting them into my mouth. “Is that … safe?” he asked.
I am reminded of this as I follow Lori McCarthy along a beautiful cliff-top walk just outside St. John’s, on Canada’s east coast. Lori is a chef who has branched out into being a culinary tour guide and professional forager – using her knowledge to supply the tables of St. John’s chefs, in particular Jeremy Charles, whose Raymond’s restaurant is often called the best in Canada.
As she points out the many, many berries you can eat, breaks off some sweet gale for me to smell (she uses it for smoking food), and talks about the “sea greens” she just picks off the beach, I feel a little like that south London stranger: “You mean all this food just … grows … out of the ground, and you just pick it up and eat it?”
“Berries are very important here,” says Lori. “They’re a way of living. It used to be the only way we could get any fruit, you know, before grocery stores, and it would only be at this time of year, right? We’d all go pick berries as kids with our mothers while our fathers went to work, and then we’d make them into jam for the rest of the year, because there often were no freezers.”
Berries are pretty much the only wild thing that would traditionally be picked, but Lori has moved on a long way since then – to things with exotic names such as chuckley pear, Saskatoon berry or fireweed.
“When I started picking things, my mother would be like, ‘That used to grow everywhere, we had no idea it was edible!’ There’s about seven or eight species of shore greens which none of the locals pick up, like kelp and bladderwrack.”
As to her link with Raymond’s, Lori says she reads a lot in the winter months, and when she started finding out about the Nordic cuisine movement spearheaded by Noma, she realised a lot of the ingredients they used were the same as could be found wild in Newfoundland and Labrador. She told Jeremy Charles that if he could include them in his recipes, she could supply them.
Later that morning Lori will take the YouTube crew I’m travelling with, as well as UK chef John Quilter, to pick chanterelle mushrooms in the woods for a “boil up” on the beach – that being the term for any campfire-type meal, however gourmet. The morning after, the YouTube crew will follow Jeremy Charles on a scallop-diving expedition. It seems there is nothing the chef won’t do to get fresh, local produce directly to his plates – which, by the way, the multi-talented Lori also makes, by hand.
And the next time you see someone picking blackberries or mushrooms in your neighbourhood, don’t ask suspiciously what they are doing – just get stuck in.
Find out more about Lori McCarthy’s food tours of St. John’s
For more information, visit www.canada.travel
