Herbs, greens, fruits, berries, nuts, seeds, roots, and mushrooms that people have been using for food and home remedies for thousands of years abound in backyards and local parks, escaping notice unless they’re sold at high prices in health food stores or green markets. Featured as ingredients in restaurants that pride themselves on local sourcing, these wild foods also pop up in gardens, to be summarily destroyed as “weeds.” Yet many of these common, free renewable resources are better-tasting and more nutritious than the produce you normally buy.
Here’s how to learn about this fascinating subject correctly:
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As soon as spring comes upon us nature begins to deliver her abundance. But when thinking of wild foods most people tend to be reminded of Autumn and the wild fruit and mushroom harvest available then.
This is probably because many people are almost entirely ignorant of wild greens. The wild plants that can be harvested (often in your own back garden) and consumed.
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Those wanting to use more wild-sourced ingredients in their cookery often ask questions like ‘where do I find recipes for …such and such…’. Whilst it’s true that many recipes for wild ingredients do exists and there are large sites catering for precisely this market, the real key to using wild-sourced ingredients in your cookery is to understand those ingredients.
Just like most good cooks will know that you can substitute plain flour with baking powder added for self-raising flour or you can substitute marjoram for oregano or turkey for pork, using wild ingredients is simply a process of knowing your ingredients and their characteristics. Once you know an ingredient, what it tastes like and how you can used it then you can simply substitute the wild ingredient in a normal recipe.
For example, young dandelion leaves are quite like bitter salad leaves. You can use them directly in any recipe calling for radiccio or endive. As salt counteracts bitterness in any food you can also blanch dandelion leaves in salted water and use as a spinach alternative.
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