Find It, Eat It
To the untrained eye, it’s a scraggly patch of weeds on Wellington’s Miramar Peninsula, just the kind of thing you might have walked past on your statesanctioned lockdown walk. To foraging expert Peter Langlands, it’s edible green gold — a roadside clump of wild water celery and watercress, bordered by wild peas, puha, kawakawa and wild radish.
“I wouldn’t normally forage for watercress from the side of the road but this one isn’t too busy and there aren’t any pollutants above it,” he explains. “It’s a relatively safe environment here, compared to foraging on farmland with livestock or parasites in the water. Roadsides like this one are great for foraging because there are quite a lot of remnant plant populations.”
Back in March, on a bright and crisp Sunday morning, burly, bearded Langlands was in his element. The day before, he’d braved the chilly temperatures of Wellington harbour to observe and gather kaimoana; the day we met he was holding a foraging workshop as part of the New Zealand Chefs Association’s first “National Foraging Day”. The day after, he was foraging-to-order for Queenstown’s Amisfield Bistro.
Now though, it’s time for breakfast. Langlands reaches into his dive bag and spears a spiky kina, collected yesterday. He slices it open and scoops out the slimy-looking orange roe with his forefinger. None of the small knot of chefs and food enthusiasts around him accept his offer to share it. Later, everyone takes a small step back as he slurps the guts from a newly shucked paua with great relish.
“It’s really creamy, with a really intense umami, Marmite-flavoured seaweed inside,” he grins. “It’s got a phenomenal taste but the problem is, you do really smelly farts after you eat it.”
Among those in the know, Langlands is regarded as New Zealand’s premier forager. He’s a curious mix — a botanist and bird-watcher who observes the natural world like a scientist and has a chef’s palate for unusual ingredients.
“I love the feeling of defiance that foraging gives you,” he says. “It’s quite a rebellious act. I can collect sheep’s sorrel and fat hen from building sites in Christchurch and then it turns up on the menus of the top restaurants in New Zealand. Foraging is like alchemy; I’m turning s*** into gold.”
Langlands’ confidence in eating plants other people would run their lawnmowers over comes from a lifetime of research and exploration. He grew up in Canterbury, where his parents loved to explore the outdoors.
“We spent a lot of time picking gooseberries, blackberries and wild apples. My father would catch trout and I’d marinate it in wild spearmint and lemon.”
After studying zoology at the University of Canterbury he spent 10 years researching endangered birds for the Department of Conservation, then five years in the Catlins studying godwit migration for Massey University. Add five years as a fisheries observer on big trawlers and 10 years as a fly-fishing guide and it’s no wonder he took to foraging so easily.
“It’s taken me 50 years to accumulate all this knowledge — it doesn’t happen overnight,” he says. “I’m still learning all the time.”
For the last few years he’s been foraging-to-order from his home base in Christchurch for some of New Zealand’s most innovative chefs, as well as self-publishing guides to edible wild plants and taking people on foraging expeditions.
“It’s a very holistic approach for me,” he says. “I do the research, the education and the development. I’ve always been interested in cooking.”
Taking a stroll with Langlands is not unlike walking with an inquisitive toddler or someone wielding a metal detector. His eyes are always roving across patches of green, scanning for undiscovered treasure. Even while sitting outside a cafe in Wellington’s manicured Botanic Gardens he reaches up and pinches new growth off a grapevine to nibble. During the photo shoot he’s delighted to spot a few birch bolete mushrooms on an otherwise immaculate lawn. “What a find,” he says excitedly. “These are very similar to porcini. They’ll be five times that size by the morning.”
His painstakingly assembled database contains more than 6000 entries for locally found edible plants and he’s a walking encyclopaedia of information. See that rock samphire? It’s tangy and robust compared to saltmarsh samphire and, if you blanch it to remove the bitterness, it’ll turn bright green. The bulbous green pods, flowers and roots of peppery wild radish are all edible, as are mallow leaves (“a superfood, full of nutrients”), delicate yellow wild brassica flowers, yarrow and native beach spinach. Silver birch trees can be tapped for sap in spring, just like maple syrup. Harakeke (flax) seeds can be sprinkled over salads. Pine needles can be infused in hot water for tea.
“See that broadleaf plantain? It’s got a neutral, almost coconutty flavour and, when the leaves are bigger, they make good bases for canapes.”
Surprisingly, his preferred gathering grounds are urban areas, particularly ones with less monocultural agriculture on their fringes.
“The edge environments around urban centres — like the edge of a river, of a coastline, of a botanical garden or a park — provide the best foraging. Anywhere that’s a bit overlooked or forgotten about, where there’s no active spraying.
“Wellington is really lucky when it comes to foraging. There’s virtually no agricultural development, there are good microclimates and lots of edge environments. It’s probably the best place to forage in New Zealand. Yesterday I went for a snorkel at Breaker Bay and I got seven legal paua, five red rock crabs, an octopus and five different types of edible seaweed in about an hour and a half. I took some people out for an hour or so this morning and we found about 60 different edible plants.”
If wild food is free, packed with nutrients and full of culinary potential, why isn’t everyone out gathering it? Langlands says there are a bunch of reasons why it’s considered a niche activity.
“We don’t have a strong food culture, other than Maori food, in New Zealand. Mainstream food isn’t getting better, it’s just becoming increasingly rubbish. There’s a real lack of diversity in our cuisine, most of it is as boring as hell.
“It’s really sad because we live in a nation with such abundant resources but, when it comes to food, we have a poverty mentality so we eat a lot of junk food and meat. The average New Zealander eats dog food. Having that over-abundance of food production means we’re not driven to really look at what’s out there.”
While a handful of chefs, including Amisfield Bistro’s Vaughan Mabee (2019’s Chef of the Year in the Cuisine Good Food Awards) and Giulio Sturla (formerly of Roots in Lyttelton), actively use foraged ingredients, Langlands says a lack of money and time stifles creativity in the rest.
“A few chefs are driving the change but using foraged stuff is nowhere near mainstream. I think New Zealand dining culture peaked three years ago and it’s a tough industry to work in because the reward for effort is just not there.”
He says regulations imposed by the Ministry for Primary Industries (MPI) make it tougher for foraged ingredients to reach mainstream diners. Chefs can’t gather beach-washed seaweeds to serve in restaurants under these rules or buy wild game from unapproved hunters, for example.
He believes foraging’s benefits aren’t widely promoted because there’s no financial imperative for big business.
“Foraging is about thinking for yourself and observing your environment but the commercial pressures of life drive people away from that mindset. I make a modest income out of foraging but I’m the only person at this level and no one makes money out of it.”
Though there wasn’t much demand for his foraged produce from restaurants in lockdown, the period was otherwise kind to Langlands. He jokes that he’s probably the one person in New Zealand who wasn’t queuing at a supermarket and talks reverently of catching rainbow trout and picking more than 40kg of birch bolete mushrooms in Canterbury.
“Foraging is very grounding and there’s a real feeling of wellbeing that comes from doing something tangible. I think a lot of people realised the importance of that in lockdown.”
He’s hopeful that increasing consciousness of the effects of climate change — and the restrictions imposed by Covid-19 — will force people to realise what’s out there, within easy grasp.
“I think people are going to think a lot more about local communities and local economies.
We’ve got to step back from the pace of life and re-evaluate things. Foraging is a way to slow down the pace of living. There’s a lot more interest in gardening now and if you combine that with foraging then you’ve got a great base for food resilience.”
He believes that greater awareness of foraging’s benefits will also result in more advocacy for the environment.
“There’s a cultural shift that needs to take place — we’ve got to have healthy environments to forage in. There’s a lot of unnecessary weed spraying done by councils and if that stopped we could gather a lot more wild plants in our local areas.”
Of course, there’s more to foraging than just knowing what to look for. Langlands says social media is an invaluable tool; while his own Wild Capture Facebook page has more than 8000 followers (and was extremely busy during lockdown), he also spends a lot of time connecting with chefs around the world to learn about their methods. “Foraging is a bit of a labyrinth really. There’s such so much to learn.”
Though beginners should obey a few golden rules — including to never taste anything without being 100 per cent sure of what it is — he is adamant that foraging is safe.
“There’s a lot of fear and ignorance,” Langlands sighs. “There’s not much out there that will kill you though, unless it’s a death cap mushroom. You might get a stomach upset from eating something toxic — like daisies or ngaio berries — but it’s not as dire as it’s made out to be.
“Through foraging, I can eat the best food available in New Zealand, things that I wouldn’t be able to buy even if I wanted to. There’s such a feeling of satisfaction from gathering your own food, it just takes a bit of time.”