Tasting notes

to chef Richard Bainbridge, spring signals fresh foraging

Foraging for all things wild and wonderful

‘This is The most exciting time of year for a chef ,’ says Richard Bainbridge ,‘ when the first shoots come through, reigniting my passion for the food of the months ahead.’

Bainbridge, the chef-owner of Benedicts in norwich, is by now, he admits, ‘done’ with swede and parsnips. so when spring arrives he hotfoots it out on to the fields and country tracks that surround his home, on the hunt for wild garlic and dandelions.

Foraging is a family affair: while Bainbridge grew up raising a radish or two, it was his wife, german-born Ka ty a, whose childhood involved mountain walks gathering edible leaves, wild blue berries and mushrooms. The couple now go picking together, along with their two-and-ahalf-year-old daughter, holly, who is being taught how to recognise what is safe to eat. ‘Wild garlic, with its large, almond-like leaf shape, is the first really green leaf of they ear,’ Ba in bridge explains, ‘easy to see and pick.’

At Benedicts, it becomes a punchy mayonnaise served with asparagus and a little frozen apple grated over the top (‘it just sings norfolk,’ says Bainbridge). At home, though, nothing beats the flavour of the raw leaves eaten on toasted, buttered sourdough – holly’s favourite.

The foraging trips guarantee flavour all year round–with the flowers, (mild er-tasting than the leaves) and then‘ capers’ made by pick ling the seeds for salty bursts into August and september. Bainbridge also adds bitter dandelion leaves to salads and whizzes them into pesto (pickling the summer f lowers), and collects coastal bounty such as sea purslane, sea beet and sea aster – ‘beautiful in soup’.