Fruits of the Forest
Mike Daunt spends an enjoyable day foraging in the New Forest
A chance encounter in Havana leads Mike Daunt to Hampshire and a
day’s foraging in the New Forest. Photographs by Hugh Nutt
“
YOU’RE Mike Daunt, aren’t you?” said a voice behind me. I turned round from my bar stool, somewhat annoyed at being recognised as I was in one of the seediest bars in downtown Havana – far more atmospheric and fun than sanitised “tourist” hotels. I had just finished a week’s bone-fishing with clients in Les Jardins de la Reine, off the south-east coast of Cuba, and had decided to escape our smart hotel by myself for a short time. I grudgingly admitted my identity.
“I thought so,” said my antagonist, with a broad grin. “I’m Robin Hutson. I’m out here buying cigars for my hotels but I am shortly going to sell them and then I want to learn to fish and I’ve heard that you’re just the man to teach me.”
Despite myself, I couldn’t help liking him. He wasn’t the normal cut of businessman. He had long, greying hair down to his shoulders and a mischievous, naughty face that betokened a great sense of humour. After a few beers together, I liked him even more. He told me that he owned the Hotel du Vin chain of hotels, which he had started from scratch in Winchester, Hampshire. He had recognised that most provincial town hotels were awful and had started up his chain to fill a gap in the market; they were seriously successful. When he sold them, he kept his promise and came to me to learn to fish for both trout and salmon. He took to the sport like a labrador to a
sausage and was soon good at it – but then I strongly suspect that anything Hutson puts his mind to is successful.
In 2011, he started another chain of hotels and again did something different. These hotels, he decided, would have huge kitchen gardens so guests could have the freshest of produce. Once, when we were fishing together for pike at Chew Valley Lake, we caught a fish of about 11lb. “Provided they are done properly,” I told Hutson, “they are delicious to eat.”
“OK,” he replied, “we’ll kill this one and take it for my chef to cook and see what he can do with it.”
His chef turned out to be as unusual and innovative as Hutson himself. James Golding
was aglitter with metal – in his ears, eyebrows and lips – while his arms were covered with tattoos. Most unusually, he potted our pike and it was utterly delicious.
Living near Hutson’s latest venture, The Pig Hotel in Brockenhurst, Hampshire, was local forager Garry Eveleigh, who was invited by Hutson to put together an accumulation of wild local food from the New Forest for his chefs. The idea was to create new and original dishes. What Eveleigh did not know was that Golding had been brought up by his father to collect the New Forest’s delicacies.
“I couldn’t wait to start cooking them,” Golding told me, when he saw Eveleigh’s collection of plants, fungi, herbs and berries. “They were the beginning of a totally new era in my culinary life and, what is more, Garry and I have become life-long friends. He still, after several years, manages to surprise me with some new addition that I have never seen before and it is always so exciting to produce a dish around it.”
Hutson soon realised that this presented another exciting opportunity that could be explored. Eveleigh could take the hotel’s guests out into the New Forest on guided walks, explaining what everything was and, literally, encouraging them to gather their own dinner. It has been a huge success.
I could not, therefore, believe my luck when I was invited to go on one of Eveleigh’s walks. We met at The Pig in Brockenhurst at nine o’clock before driving out into the forest. Eveleigh is another “original”. He was born and brought up in Lymington with the New Forest as his back garden. From the age of nine, he went out with his father to gather field mushrooms and then, at 16, found a huge area of ceps – or penny buns, to give them their country name. He took a few home to look up in his book of fungi and, when he was certain they were edible, cooked and devoured them; the New Forest and its delights have been his passion ever since. He also has a “day job” running Puffin Cruises with his partner; they take passengers over to the Isle of Wight in their boats, Puffin Billi and Puffin Belle.
We were accompanied on our walk by two of Eveleigh’s children, Kate and Piers, who are both equally at one with the New Forest. We followed Eveleigh into the trees and had gone barely 10 yards when he stopped. “There,” he said, “the miller.” I saw a pale, almost white mushroom on the forest floor. “They love the company of ceps so look around and we’ll probably find some.”
Sure enough, a little way apart were the lordly ceps, which we picked and put into the basket. “Never cut a penny bun,” said Eveleigh, producing a knife. “This is not for cutting,” he explained, “this is for paring the stems of the dirtier bits. It’s a common fallacy that you should always cut mushrooms. People imagine that mushrooms have roots and that if you lift them out of the ground, you will destroy the root. It is, of course, total drivel. Mushrooms grow from mycelium, which is an invisible underground thread. If you cut penny buns you will leave their broad stalk in the ground. If it then rains, the stalk will act as a carrier and funnel for the water and damage the mycelium.”
“Is the miller edible?” I asked.
“It is delicious and common,” Eveleigh replied, “but be careful not to mistake it for the fool’s funnel, which is extremely poisonous. Also, notice that we put our fruits of the forest into a wicker basket not into a carrier bag. This is because the spores can escape through a basket as we walk and sow more mushrooms.”
We continued our stroll, crossing a small, shallow brook. It was only about 6ft wide
but I am always interested in water. “Does that have any fish in it?” I asked, thinking that maybe it would have a few tiny trout and some minnows and sticklebacks. Eveleigh looked at me and smiled. “This big,” he said, extending his arms. I looked amazed. “Its a spawning stream for the River Beaulieu. Those are seatrout and they run up to 12lb.
“Now that is a truly interesting fungi,” said Eveleigh suddenly, looking at an incredibly beautiful mushroom with a white stem and a bright red, white-spotted cap. “Fly agaric. It’s hallucinogenic as it contains the powerful psychoactive compound muscimol. This produces euphoria and is known to have been used by the Vikings just before their raids. Of course, it isn’t edible but it is not, as is widely believed, fatal. That accolade I will reserve for the death cap. If you ate just a tiny piece of that it would have no effect upon you for at least 12 hours and then you would have a fever, a high temperature, stomach cramps, vomiting and cholera-like diarrhoea. You could easily put it down to the last meal you ate for the effects are very similar to severe food poisoning. Then, after 24 hours of misery, you would recover and think that you were over it. However, six to 12 hours later you would go into a coma out of which you would be unlikely to recover.”
One of the joys of a walk with Eveleigh is that it is like being in the company of Peter
The baskets were overflowing with delights… it truly was food that money couldn’t buy
Pan. He has never lost the boyish enthusiasm of youth and all of us were carried away with the excitement of the day. Thus, when he stopped abruptly and uttered the word “Yes”, I knew that this was something special. “Chanterelle,” he gasped, as if he’d never seen them before. I stared at the stunning, yellow, prized and delicious fungi. “There are very few here and they’re small,” he said. “They prefer pine forests.” I knew this from having gathered them in Scotland and they are, indeed, truly food for kings.
As the wonderful walk ended, Eveleigh had one final thing to say. “You’ve seen what the forest has to offer,” he said, “but please, and here is a very serious warning to you all, do not ever eat a mushroom unless you are totally certain of its safety. If you have even one tiny doubt, leave it.”
With that admonition ringing in our ears, we returned to The Pig. On the way there, I asked Eveleigh if you actually had to be a resident at The Pig to go on one of his walks. “No,” he replied, “but you do have to eat there, either lunch or dinner.”
When we arrived, Golding was waiting for us and removed the baskets, which were by now overflowing with delights. We sat down outside in the courtyard with the autumn sunshine glinting on our wine glasses. Half an hour later, Golding returned with our plates brimming with a multitude of mushrooms, together with some of his own homecured ham. It truly was food that money couldn’t buy and I cannot remember a more delicious lunch.
Eveleigh has now written a book called, quite simply, Wildcook. It contains all his extraordinary knowledge about wild food, both in the New Forest and on the seashore. It is also filled with Golding’s unique recipes for all that you can gather and a foreword by Robin Hutson. Absorbing and original, I cannot recommend it highly enough. Wildcook – Ceps, Shrubs & Rock ’n’ Roll,