Food Safari baskets full of foraged mushrooms

Autumn is the ideal time to have a go at foraging as hedgerows are heaving with fruit, the mushroom season is in full swing and even public parks hide surprises. Holly Willis meets the experts to find out where the wild things are

Food Safari at Henham Park in Suffolk

You may have eaten local, seasonal, and organic food but there’s something magical about getting out in the fresh air and gathering it yourself. Wild foods are often highly nutritious and really tasty, not to mention packaging, pesticide and price tag free. But the biggest surprise of all is how easy they are to find here.

Polly Robinson set up Food Safari with her husband after a childhood spent visiting her aunt and uncle’s organic farm and then frequenting farmers’ markets as an adult. She runs foraging days in East Anglia.

‘People seem more and more interested in wild food,’ says Polly, ‘I think it is something to do with an interest in sustainability and a desire to get back to a simpler way of life.’

So what can you expect to find in the area if you go foraging now?

Dandilion petals and leaves are tasty sprinkled on salads

In the hedgerows

Hedgerows are an ideal place for novice foragers to start as you can find many easily identifiable treats. Blackberries are plentiful and fun for the whole family to enjoy picking, but rosehips, crab apples, hazelnuts and wild plums such as sloes and bullaces are also in season now. Folklore says it’s best not to pick sloes until after the first frost, but once you do, it’s easy to infuse gin with the fruit and some sugar for a liqueur that will be ready just in time for Christmas.

[blob or pullquote]TIP! Fruits like wild plums and blackberries are divine heated for a few minutes with a sprinkling of sugar and dash of your favourite tipple, then poured over vanilla icecream as a hot compote.

Down in the woods

Wild mushrooms are a little harder to forage but well worth it. Always go with an experienced guide and a good identification book to avoid poisonous varieties. Puffballs look how they sound and are one of the easier mushrooms to spot, with a halloumi-like texture, delicious fried with butter and garlic (but what isn’t tasty cooked that way?). Horse mushrooms are also worth looking for but don’t forget the scratch and sniff test. Edible Horse mushrooms smell good enough to eat, with an aniseed aroma. Very similar but poisonous Yellow Stainer mushrooms don’t, but will turn yellow when scratched, as the name suggests. If you are lucky you’ll spot the fabulously named Chicken Of The Woods which can replace chicken in most recipes, or Beefsteak mushrooms that, if soaked in milk for half an hour before cooking, are said to have a meaty flavour.

Parks and gardens

Your local park and own garden may not look like havens for wild food but they often harbour a number of edible plants that you probably dismiss as weeds, hiding in un-mown spots or undisturbed corners. Dandelion petals, for example, are beautiful as a garnish and Chickweed can be eaten raw like a salad leaf.

Jacky Sutton Adam is a wild food expert working with Food Safari, living in Cambridge and passionate about our green spaces. ‘We are incredibly lucky with the resources we have in Cambridge. Our parks offer so much more than just a grassy spot to play or sit.’

This is certainly true. We went for a walk on Midsummer Common and Jacky pointed out no fewer than nine different things to eat in about 15 minutes. These included Smooth Sow Thistle, which is good as a salad leaf, and Fat Hen, which Jacky says is ‘absolutely delicious and tastes like spinach but without that funny feeling on the back or your teeth’.

Ground Ivy is plentiful at this time of year and makes an excellent pick me up when steeped in hot water to make a herbal tea. Ground Elder is also easy to spot and, according to Jacky, the tender young leaves go well with carrot and coriander as they are all from the same family. Even the humble lime tree is the forager’s friend – the nut-like fruits, called masts, are perfect for children to collect with their small fingers and are delicious toasted like pine nuts. The young leaves have a lemony flavour when eaten raw or used to make a liqueur called Noyau.

Nettles may be a pain to collect but they are high in vitamins C, B complex and pro vitamin A, not to mention containing more iron than Spinach. Jacky makes nettle beer using just nettles, sugar, yeast, water and a bit of citrus peel – which sounds more fun than the classic nettle soup.

‘Our nettle beer is quite good this year,’ says Jacky. ‘The only trouble is it’s live and continues to ferment in the bottle, getting more and more alcoholic and less palatable as time goes on, so you can’t store it and have to drink it quickly!’

So whether you want to get to know your local area better, eat a more adventurous diet, or just make some really interesting booze for Christmas, there’s a wealth of edible treasures just waiting to be found a short walk from your door.

Food Safari, 01728 621380, foodsafari.co.uk.

An afternoon of hedgerow foraging, Aldeburgh, 7 October, £30. A full day mushroom foray plus three-course lunch with drinks and goodie bag, Henham Park near Walberswick, 8 and 22 October, £150. Booking advisable.

Foraging – what you need to know

- Always ask the landowner’s permission before foraging. It’s illegal to uproot plants without permission.

- It is illegal to forage in areas that are protected or of special scientific interest.

- Be absolutely certain you have properly identified something before you eat it and only try a small amount the first time.

- Always go mushroom foraging with an expert guide and a book to identify fungi precisely as it is difficult to tell the difference between some edible and highly poisonous varieties.

- Avoid areas where plants could have been soiled by animals, sprayed with chemicals, diseased or absorbed toxins, such as busy roadsides or near rivers.

- Only pick what is plentiful, healthy and young, taking no more than you can eat in one sitting, leaving enough of the plant behind to regenerate.