Wild foods such as Marsh Samphire are making their way on to the plates of trendy international restaurants. They join such wild-sourced foods as truffles as culinary oddities and gourmet foods. Are these trail-blazers in a new trend, and is there something more going on here?
In Europe, at least, the Second World War marked a watershed in culinary tastes. Foraging for wild foods became an essential part of survival. Wild-sourced foods often became essential dietary staples for those who could access those foods. It was inevitable, after the shortages of the war cam to an end that people would shie away from such subsistence foods and that commercial agricultural produce and processed foods became the be-all and end-all of daily sustenance. Two generations lost the knowledge of which wild foods were edible and which wern’t (with the notable exception of fruit such as blackberries and certain mushrooms). Consumers became more distant from the land than ever before.
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We are so inured to shop-bought factory-farmed foods that we forget that all our foodstuffs originated in the wild. Indeed, everything we eat today started out life as a wild plant. Due to selective breeding cabbages and kale may not look much like their wild ancestors any more. Which is not to say that those wild ancestors don’t exist and remain perfectly edible.
If you know what to look for and how to recognize the plants then the wild harvest can provide many completely free delights for your table. What’s more wild foods are truly and completely seasonal and provide a sense of what our ancestors used to eat.
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Often those who advocate wild foods and wild ingredients are seen as either slightly worthy or slightly weird. It can frequently be perceived that such proponents of wild foods want you to whole-heartedly and completely change your lifestyle to eating nothing but wild foods.
You are welcome to do this, if you so desire, but that’s definitely not the point of the wild food movement at all. It’s partly about increasing people’s views of nature and the natural world. After all, if you naturally add wild ingredients to your overall larder then you will appreciate nature and what it can do for your. Nature no longer becomes an enemy or something you have to fight with. Rather the wild world becomes an extension of your environment. Something useful that you can dip into to extend the types of food available to you.
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