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.

You can build a meal based on nothing but wild foods. Or, you can go into the wild and source things like young linden (lime tree) leaves or wild herbs for use in a salad or recipe as a simple addition.

Here I present two wild food dishes. A salad that includes almost nothing but wild-sourced foods and a main course includes a few wild-sourced ingredients as additions to he list of overall ingredients.

Winter Salad

Ingredients:
1 large bunch wintercress
1 large bunch bittercress
1 large bunch chickweed
handful of gorse flowers (if available)
10 sheep’s sorrel leaves (or wood sorrel if it’s a mild winter)
4 tbsp melted clarified butter
2 tbsp cider vinegar
1/2 finely-chopped small onion

Method:
Wash the herbs thoroughly and place in a bowl. Finely-chop the sheep’s sorrel (or wood sorrel) and add to a lidded jar along with the onion, melted butter, vinegar and seasonings.

Shake to mix thoroughly then arrange the greens in a bowl, pour the dressing over them, toss and serve.

Spicy Chicken and Goosegrass

Ingredients:
600g chicken breasts, cubed
4 garlic cloves, minced
2 small onions, sliced
butter or oil for frying
1/2 tsp ground ginger
1/2 tsp ground cumin
1/2 tsp ground coriander seeds
1/2 tsp cayenne pepper(1/2 tsp freshly-milled black pepper
1/2 tsp garam masala
4 whole cloves
10 tomatoes, chopped
200g goosegrass leaves
salt, to taste

Method:
Add the chicken and a little oil to a pan and stir-fry until nicely browned. Remove the meat from the pan and set aside. Now add a little more oil to the pan and use this to gently fry the onion and garlic for a few minutes before adding the spices (except the garam masala). Fry for a few minutes more then return the chicken to the pan along with the tomatoes and about 400ml water.

Season with salt then bring the mixture to a boil. Reduce to a very low simmer, cover and continue cooking for about 40 minutes, stirring occasionally to prevent sticking. Raise the heat at the end of this time and stir-in the goosegrass.

Continue cooking until the sauce thickens and most of the liquid has evaporated. Remove from the heat, add the garam masala and serve on a bed of rice.

I hope that these recipes have shown that incorporating wild foods into your diet does not need to be complex or ‘worthy’ all you need to do is go out, find some ingredients and use them!

Dyfed Lloyd Evans has a love of food and cookery and a particular passion for incorporating more wild-sourced ingredients into modern cooking. He has created a Guide to Wild Foods which is free for all to browse and you can find many more recipes incorporating wild ingredients in his Wild Food Recipes pages.

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

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