h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

Blaeberries always remind me of your mate MacDiarmuid, Ed.

Bilberries, blaeberries, whortleberries etc - yes they're found on hills. But as I'm pretty much on the moorland here, they can also be found alongside the roads and footpaths round my village

@KB:



http://www.poetryfoundation.org/poem/176169

Eighth stanza

Don´t know if this is foraged food, but...

Do you eat the leaves of the turnip plant?

In Galicia (Northwest) they are called grelos. It´s the region that most consume them. You take them before the plant has bloomed.

Lacón con grelos is a typical Gallegan meal:
http://vagondecola.expreso.info/es/content/33_grelos

Another plant that grows wild and also it´s cultivated, is the Borago officinalis L.
Borraja, borage for you.

http://gastronomiacanariamagazine.blogspot.com.es/2011/08/borraja.html

You eat the stems and the leaves. The flowers too, in salads.
The flowers have a sweet delicate flavour so you can decorate with them some dessert too.

There are two ways of answering that question, depending on whether 'you' is singular or plural ('yous')

In general in Britain, turnips are sold topless. But *I* eat turnip tops whenever I can get them (mainly from Pakistani shops) - and very tasty they are too.

Beetroot tops are also tasty. I use them in a frittata/tortilla. (or kookoo, depending on how far east we go.)

Or radish tops.

Oh...and we have borage allover our garden. I planted some a few years ago and now it's everywhere. The traditional use for the flowers is in Pimms.

http://cocktailsfortwo.files.wordpress.com/2010/06/borage-pimms-final-cropped.jpg

In the US South, mustard, turnip, and collard are eaten as greens. Boiled. Turnips and collards are boiled with a bit of pork fat or bacon, mustard is boiled, and a touch of vinegar is added.

In Greece, they make great boiled greens. I don't know what they are. When I asked, they just said 'horta'. Er, greens. The Greeks aren't into precision, their favourite word seemed to be 'thingembob'.

Do you grow yours in winter, Maria? During mild winters, we can harvest greens all the way to Christmas.

Horta are often dandelions, are they not?

But, yes, 'green stuff' wilted with garlic and olive oil.

You know, those could have been dandelions, and I didn't notice. I've never knowingly eaten a dandelion.

Leaf lettuce, wilted, with olive oil.

Or with butter, cream and petis pois.

Sounds good.

Unless we foraged these, we should shut up.

<<Do you grow yours in winter, Maria?

ay!! ay!! amigo! I wish I could!

That´s my dream, to have an orchard.



roasted turnips and potatoes with basil, cheese and olive oil...mmmm

Pickled turnips.

http://www.shamgardens.com/thumb_prod/PickledTurnip660g91817.jpg

The colour there is natural. They go an unfeasible shade of fuschia when brined.

This gives me an idea. We're having friends over at the weekend for dinner. My default would be Indian food...only they're Indian themselves. I was planning Middle Eastern. This gives me an excuse to visit Super Asia where the guy says he aims to cater for all the local communities.

I used to forage regularly when I first moved to Manchester, but something else seems to be filling my time

There's a large park very close to my house, and a couple of cloughs and woodland reserves. From these I can easily get dandelions, raspberries, hawthorn, blackberries, elderflower and elderberries, along with some mushrooms which I don't know enough about yet to try. But the rest make excellent wines.

You do know that nowadays some shops sell proper wine, professionally made out of grapes? I'm given to understand that some of them are quite palatable.

....and Chateaux Mouton Rothchild '68 generally doesn't blow up in the airing cupboard

Whereas homemade kvass tends to blow up. My Russian instructor made the mistake of giving us the recipe.

'Russian Instructor' ? Nah, that was a cunning saboteur of airing cupboards with a good disguise.

blowing stuff up in the airing cupboard, that is asking for all sorts of trouble these days

Mushroom picking is a national sport in Russia. Everybody does this at the weekends in season. And for those who can't, little old ladies supplement their incomes by selling buckets of foraged mushrooms by metro stations, as well as berries. And people generally know their mushrooms well enough to buy them too, although there are the occasional deaths. I think it's a combination of the fact that until quite recently Russians have not been able to get huge variety of foodstuffs (or anything else) in shops (and still can't in the provinces I expect) and plentiful supply - compared to the UK, Russia really has a lot of wild forest and uncultivated land. One of the biggest contrasts I remember first noticing when we got back was how cultivated looked after the countryside is here.

I do blackberry though. A bit. Usually there aren't many left by the time I get around to it, although there are usually still a lot on the bushes where casual pickers can't reach. But my most exciting moment of the last few years was discovering that Hyde Park has a lot of chestnut trees which hardly anyone seems to make use of.

Exploding kvas? Pshaw. I have a very strong memory of being woken as a teen by my parents'(foraged) sloe gin exploding all over the dining room. Now there's a smell.