Foraging for real

by Alice Lascelles

'Seasonal’ – it’s a word that pops up all over cocktail lists these days and, to coin a phrase from Alan Partridge, it’s become a bit of an Achilles bugbear of mine. Seasonal means ingredients that are IN SEASON. It doesn’t mean exotic, or summery, or organic, or locally-sourced, or expensive or hard to spell. It means that they are out there, ready and ripe for harvesting RIGHT NOW. And yet everywhere you go you see menus describing their berry caipirinhas as ‘seasonal’ – maybe back home in Brasil they’re in season, but over here it’s mid December and the snow is lying a foot deep outside. It’s become a completely meaningless bit of marketing nonsense.

Enough of this, I say – for a guide to what’s in season in the UK read this.

This is particularly on my mind because I have just spent a very enjoyable weekend on a foraging course in Kent with a man called Fergus. This is about as seasonal as it gets – what you end up eating changes by the day. And we ate incredibly well – did you know Japanese Knot Weed tastes of rhubarb? We made a crumble out of it. And ate foraged salads strewn with nettle flowers. And drank mead made with birch tree sap. We deep fried seaweed on the beach (an explosive affair as you can see), uprooted wild carrots from the sandbanks and ate candied Alexander stalks. We pickled jelly ear fungus, and stuffed bottles of vodka with the coconut scented gorse blossoms, and steamed fish in seaweed under hot pebbles. And discovered that goji berries – normally imported from the Himalayas - actually grow on the Kentish coast. Did you know that? I certainly didn’t. Maybe I’ve been mistaken and those goji berry cocktails are ‘seasonal’ after all...

For more info on Fergus the Forager visit www.wildmanwildfood.com