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.

Wild greens such as sea kale and sea beet, being members of the cabbage family can be used in any recipes that call for other members of the cabbage family (eg cabbage, kale, collard greens, turnip greens, chard and even spinach). They just need to be blanched in salted water for a few minutes to make them tender and less bitter before use.

Common mallow has a taste profile and a mucilaginous nature that’s very similar to Egyptian corchorus and so can be directly substituted to make the Egyptian soup, Melokhia. In a similar vein dried Linden (European lime) leaves are similar to West African baobab leaves and American sassafras and like their culinary equivalents can be used to thicken stews and soups.

Wild fruit, of course, can be used in any recipe that calls for a domestic fruit: jams, preserves, cakes, ice creams, granitas etc. Just remember that wild fruit tend to be a little more sour than their domestic cousins and adjust the sugar content accordingly.

Standard wild greens such as Good King Henry, Fat Hen, chickweed, bedstraw and many others can be used in a very similar way to spinach and work well anywhere spinach would be used. If young they can even be eaten raw in salads.
Edible flowers can be candied (just store in sugar for a few days) and used in ice creams or to decorate desserts and cakes. Edible wild flowers provide an aromatic and sweet note to many dishes and are excellent in salads and as decoration for desserts and cakes.

Young shoots of many wild plants, such as Japanese knotweed and hogweed can be prepared, steamed and eaten in much the same way as asparagus and make wonderful alternatives to this vegetable.

Essentially, once you know what a wild ingredient is equivalent to or can be substituted for you can modify any recipe with that traditional ingredient and substitute-in the wild ingredient for it. So, the question when coming to wild foods isn’t ‘where do I find recipes for this?’ but rather, should be ‘what can I use this ingredient instead of?’ Then you can just mix and match and substitute to your heart’s content.

Make life easy for yourself, rather than hard!

Dyfed Lloyd Evans is the creator of the Celtnet Guide to Wild Foods, a large list of edible wild foods and how to use them. He is also the author of the Wild Food Recipes, a catalogue of recipes incorporating wild foods.

Article Source: http://EzineArticles.com/?expert=Dyfed_Lloyd_Evans

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.

But the wheel is turning. Concern for the planet has led to increased awareness and interest in the possibilities of foraging and the finding of wild food sources. This is partly a matter of curiosity and partly an increased interest in the recipes of the past and their ingredients. There is also an increased interest in growing a larger range of herbs and flowers in the garden to attract insects (and many of these insect-attracting plants happen to be edible).

This has resulted in increased knowledge and curiosity about ancient food sources and how wild and different foodstuffs can be used. This the ancient Elizabethan trade in marsh samphire has been renewed and samphire is now on the menu. But it doesn’t stop there. Those people who would look for blackberries in summer are now collecting elder flowers in May, elderberries in August, wild plums and hazelnuts in September, and sloes in October — and these are just the common fruit.

Once you start down this road of discovery you find that common garden weeds such a bedstraw, fat hen and chickweed are not only edible but make good vegetables. Rather than grubbing these up and adding them to your compost heap, you can wash them and add them to your dinner plate! Then there are the wild herbs, the wild greens such as ramsons (wild garlic) in spring and Field Mustard which can be found year round. There are even greens such as coltsfoot, and common wintercress that can be found and consumed even in the depths of Winter.

Part of the attraction of these wild foods is that they bring out the ‘hunter-gatherer’ in all of us. It’s part of our ancestry, our heritage and once you get bitten by the foraging bug you will never quite be the same again. You will find that in spring you serve your dinner guests a hedgerow salad made of wild greens and wild flowers, in summer you will have summer puddings of wild fruit and in autumn you have the harvest of wild nuts and wild mushrooms to draw on. Even in the depths of winter there are stored fruit and wild greens that you can use.

Next time you pass a tangled hedgerow or an overgrown verge why not stop for a moment to look at the range of plant life that exists there. With a simple guide and some patience you will even be able to get yourself a tasty meal from those plants.

Trendy restaurants may be scraping the verges of wild foods to make a statement and make a name for themselves, but you as real cooks can truly appreciate the breadth and depth of the range of wild foodstuffs available to you. They will truly allow you to connect to your ancestors for these are the foods they collected and consumed. Keep the ancient traditions alive and try some wild foods for yourself.

To learn more about wild foods, how to recognize them and cook them take a look at the Wild Food Guide.

Dyfed Lloyd Evans is a cook and Internet author who is passionate about ancient foods and ancient cookery. He shares his knowlege on this subject in his Celtnet Recipes site. His reconstruction of ancient recipes can be found on his Ancient Recipes pages.

Article Source: http://EzineArticles.com/?expert=Dyfed_Lloyd_Evans