Wild food menu - now!

[mickwood]

Hi folks,

Just thought it would be really interesting to set a question (after reading the wild grub thread!)

The question is...

"What would your Menu be for October, created as much as possible from food that could be foraged now?" (i.e. you walked out your door and gathered it all today)

So...go wild! what would your 3 course meal consist of?

 

[spiritofold]

I gotta say plantain biscuits

 

[Diligence]

...hmmm - good question. If I got up off my chair right now and went outside to my immediate environment I would say, in order of ease of procurement:

- berries (but most of them are gone already)
- rose hips
- cattails
- fish (trout), and I'd have to get lucky catching a spawning brown trout in the shallows
- rabbits and/or squirrels (but would have to wait for traps to be built and set)

Maybe a pigeon or two?

D

 

[spamel]

Twig and leaf soup!

 

[johnnytheboy]

Piles of nettles at my back fence, guess soup would be on the cards

 

[British Red]

Game season is on. Certainly a partridge or pheasant main. I'd use a horseradish sauce for some heat. For a carb hit I guess I would use the normal standbys of dandelion root. Maybe some beechmast and acron flour for a form of rosti.

Plenty of berries round here still and loads of apples too (crab and feral) so lets have blackberry and apple for desert.

Starter? How about some smoked trout?

A cup of acorn coffee for after and some blackberry leaf tea with the food.

Red

 

[mickwood]

Game season is on. Certainly a partridge or pheasant main. I'd use a horseradish sauce for some heat. For a carb hit I guess I would use the normal standbys of dandelion root. Maybe some beechmast and acron flour for a form of rosti.

Plenty of berries round here still and loads of apples too (crab and feral) so lets have blackberry and apple for desert.

Starter? How about some smoked trout?

A cup of acorn coffee for after and some blackberry leaf tea with the food.

Red

Now there's a person who knows their stuff!!

 

[Chips]

I reckon I would do a bit of smoked salmon. Maybe a piece of hot and cold smoked salmon together, with a bit of lobster. Possibly serve it with some lightly stewed crab apples. The apples have a nice acidity to them that goes with fish.

Then, probably a bit of pigeon breast, fried. For carbohydrates, I don't really know, most of the things that you can eat that have a lot of carbohydrates are either labour intensive or not delicious. I'll just assume we're cooking for someone on the atkinds diet. Might go with a bit of confitted pigeon for a contrast. With some chanterelles. And I think a damson sauce.

And finally, a mixture of fruits, blaeberries, rasps, brambles, roasted. With some honey.

 

[Neil1]

Plenty of berries round here still !!

Red[/QUOTE]

Some of those berries have to be taken with care Red, folks have all sorts of intolerances!!


As far as greens go, it could be march/April round here - Alexanders, Hedge Mustard, the most beautiful Sorrel, it's spring all over again.
In season or not - road kill comes in year round, this week Fallow deer, ring doves, etc.
Your menu is what you make of whats around and that can vary greatly, region to region, place to place, etc, etc. It would bereally good to see what is turning up in different areas tho.
Neil

 

[spamel]

Pheasant isn't till the end of the month is it? Partridge is on though, I think I saw one when out shooting with The Ratbag at the weekend, we didn't shoot the little fellah though.

 

[Matt_M]

Pigeon breast main stuffed with crushed hazel / sweet chestnuts roasted over open fire accompanied with roasted cattail roots. Starter would be a nettle soup using a stock from the pigeon carcas.

 

[Joe]

On my Wild Food Forage last weekend we had pan fried partridge and pigeon breast, Burdock and thistle roots parboiled then stir fried in olive oil and some amazing shaggy parasol mushrooms for lunch.
For the evening meal we ate crayfish on a bed of hairy bittercress and wood sorrell leaves for starter, venison cooked in an underground hangi oven, mashed potato with a hint of wild mint (ok, so we bought in the spuds), Cep fried in butter and a sauce made from blackberries and elderberries mixed with some of the venison offal fried up. Pudding was caramellised crab apples and it was all washed down with Grand Fir tea and Sweet Woodruff enfused vodka.

Burp!

As soon as I can work out how to post pictures I'll get some up.

 

[Jumbalaya]

Down here in Cornwall we've been getting spring growth of about 6 or 7 edible species which makes the 'October Feast' somewhat better than just nuts, acorns and berries.

Currently looking at burdock root and sorrel (as Neil mentioned ina prev. post), hedge garlic, new cat's-tail shoots (quite well advanced), cleavers/goosegrass, violets (3 bunches in flower), primrose, three-cornered leek. So much you can do with all of these.

Marcus

 

[mickwood]

On my Wild Food Forage last weekend we had pan fried partridge and pigeon breast, Burdock and thistle roots parboiled then stir fried in olive oil and some amazing shaggy parasol mushrooms for lunch.
For the evening meal we ate crayfish on a bed of hairy bittercress and wood sorrell leaves for starter, venison cooked in an underground hangi oven, mashed potato with a hint of wild mint (ok, so we bought in the spuds), Cep fried in butter and a sauce made from blackberries and elderberries mixed with some of the venison offal fried up. Pudding was caramellised crab apples and it was all washed down with Grand Fir tea and Sweet Woodruff enfused vodka.

Burp!

As soon as I can work out how to post pictures I'll get some up.

WOW!! That's a proper sorting of food

 

[Joe]

Sure was! We had a massive Ponassed Salmon for sunday lunch the next day too. At the end of the course we were so fat we couldn't fit between the trees so we had to blow a landing site in the woods to be airlifted out.