Foraging for food in great outdoors
A NEWS photographer told me he once survived on “bread and cheese” during a particularly lengthy stakeout. He had longed for a real sandwich but had to make do with leaves plucked from a hedgerow. The hedge was hawthorn, the “bread and cheese” a name for its buds and young leaves. In springtime they have a pleasant nutty flavour. He knew what was good for him as he had grown up in the countryside.
Youngsters of my generation chewed grasses on our rambles especially stems such as couch or scutch, a persistent weed. One heard its roots were dried and ‘used in the war’ for medicinal purposes.
The term ‘foraging’ has entered the popular lexicon as activities in magazine articles aimed at weekend ramblers seeking to discover forgotten tastes of hunter-gatherer ancestors. Searching for berries, plants and edible weeds has become a popular activity. Few are aware of the considerable variety of what is growing beneath our feet and their various culinary uses.
Of course there is nervousness in tasting wild growths because of pesticide and herbicide use. Care is always necessary.
One yellow-flowered weed common on new motorways and recently disturbed land sometimes seems to have sprung up overnight — and it has! This is charlock (in Irish praiseach buí) the seeds of which can live undisturbed for 50 years. A pernicious weed and described by the writer Geoffrey Grigson as a
“vegetable rat”, it was once eaten as a type of cabbage and as an ingredient in gruels, mixed with oats.
During the Great Famine and after, it was mixed with imported Indian meal for ‘stirabout’ and praiseach became an accepted Irish language word for porridge. Praiseach-eaters, the poorest of the poor, could be recognised by a yellow fringe about their mouths
In seeking out the fruits of the countryside it is important to have a good field guide. There have been several published, but not since Richard Mabey’s seminal Food for Free in 1973 has there been such a comprehensive work as The Wild Food Plants of Ireland, published under the aegis of the Department of Agriculture and written by Tom Curtis and Paul Whelan.
Here is a guide to 162 different ancestors of contemporary food plants, giving history, distribution and culinary uses — Darina Allen has written the foreword. The illustrations clearly identify plants, berries and grasses giving necessary details for the forager. I would have welcomed an appendix of poisonous plants, though. We cannot be too careful!
‘The Wild Food Plants of Ireland’ by Tom Curtis and Paul Whelan (Orla Kelly Publishing, €30)