Liz Knight once stopped short of sending her daughter to primary school with nettle omelette in her lunchbox, for fear of the reaction of the other children. Her husband told her: “Don’t you dare.” But Knight, who has been teaching courses on foraging in the wilds around her home in rural Herefordshire for the past 10 years, would not be so reticent today.
Attitudes towards foraging – heading out into nearby countryside or parks and collecting edible plants, mushrooms and fruits – have changed, and, she says, “there’s been a real shift with the pandemic”.
“There’s definitely been a rise in interest,” agrees Marlow Renton, a director and foraging instructor at Wild Food UK, which runs courses in England, Wales and Scotland. Not only was it a bumper year for sales of its 2019 foraging pocket guide, but the organisation’s website has “had over a million [visitors] last year – an upturn of about 25%”.
During the pandemic many more people have been connecting with nature on daily walks – and noticing local, possibly edible, plants has been a part of that. But Knight, who also runs courses in wild food cooking at the TV presenter Kate Humble’s farm in Monmouth, thinks a longer-term shift has been happening, with restaurants embracing the trend.
Where once British cuisine was synonymous with stodgy suet and overcooked veg, Knight believes that television programmes such as Great British Menu have, in the past few years, helped to increase appreciation for what can be done with ingredients available locally. “It’s very difficult to find a restaurant [offering British cuisine] that doesn’t do wild food, because it’s intrinsic to seasoning and locality,” she says.
Restaurants such as the Ethicurean in the Mendip hills, where ingredients such as hedgerow berries regularly get on the menu, have been pioneers. While not forcing information on people, they try to “have a small amount of a foraged item potentially on most dishes, with a view to sparking interest in our guests”, says Matthew Pennington, chef and co-owner. He says it’s about “encouraging people to get out there and start to have a look in nature themselves.”
The Michelin Guide recently launched a green star for “restaurants at the forefront of the industry when it comes to their sustainable practices”, including the Ethicurean. Many, if not all, serve foraged items, helping to bring wild food to diners’ attention.
Away from restaurants, Knight thinks home cooks are increasingly clued up about foraging. When she first started selling hogweed, people would quiz her, believing it to be a poison. Now, “people just take it and say ‘oh yes, I know hogweed’.”
“Ingredients that [foragers] used have become more mainstream,” she says. “One of the most classic things is meadowsweet, then nettles and wild garlic. There used to be a reticence to pick those kinds of things and now it’s far more normal.”
Historically we had a much stronger connection with wild food. “If you look at really old recipe books they’re full of edible flowers,” says Knight. But things shifted with the industrial revolution. “All reference to edible flowers in food disappeared because it was seen as being down-at-heel country stuff, unsophisticated.” Now, it’s gone full circle.
Renton believes up to 20% of his diet is foraged. And the things that go on his plate from foraging are, he says, “the good stuff” – “like porcini mushrooms and chanterelles, which cost £50 a kilo if you’re buying them from Borough market [in London]”.
Foraging courses have had a positive environmental impact, Renton notes: “People will go out into their local wood and find things, and those things come back each year … you become a conservator of that wood or bit of green, where your favourite raspberry bush grows. It teaches you. It makes nature really interesting and really useful.”
The movement looks set to continue to grow: the annual Waitrose Food and Drink report predicts that foraging will carry on enjoying a surge in popularity in 2021, noting an 89% increase in social media interest. A number of new books, including Knight’s upcoming Forage: Wild Plants to Gather, Cook and Eat, address what to pick and when.
For those planning to head out, now is a good time. “Everybody can sense the fizz in the ground,” says Pennington. “All the wild herbs are springing up.”
Knight recommends nettles, which “are obviously amazing and everywhere”; garlic mustard, which grows in parks and on verges and can be put into salads; and three-cornered leek, an “invasive but delicious cross between a leek and a garlic”.
For those new to foraging, Pennington says it’s “important to go out with people that know a little bit more than you. You only need showing those two or three things and you’ll learn to recognise them.”
Knight urges caution. “Read up,” she says, and go slow. When picking wild garlic, for instance, “there’s loads of plants that grow through it that are poisonous. All you have to do is identify it properly, which is easy to do, and then don’t go ripping up clumps of it, just do it leaf by leaf, then you know you’re getting the right thing.”
For anything low to the ground, Knight has sage advice: “Gather away from anywhere polluted. And avoid areas where dogs have been putting their vinaigrette.”
