Foraging for wild food is becoming increasingly popular across the UK – there are thousands of edible plants growing wild in woodlands, estuaries and hedgerows across the country, and more of us are taking an interest in the delicacies available around us. The key of course is in education – you should never eat something unless you’re absolutely sure of what it is, and that it’s clean! Sure, you could grab a load of books from your local library, become a botanist and painstakingly trawl over the details of thousands of plants. Or, you could head out into the wild with someone who already knows what they’re talking about.
Chris Harrod shot to prominence in the 2018 series of Great British Menu, where he stood out from the crowd with a suite of dishes that featured a plethora of wild ingredients. First, there was ‘Sensory garden’ – a dish of mugwort-smoked beets with black pudding, caramelised onion and wild herbs and seeds. The star of his fish course was mackerel that had been cured in meadowsweet – a sweet, medicinal herb that grows prolifically in the spring. His ‘Everything but the Squeal’ suckling pig dish received straight ten-out-of-ten ratings from the judges, featuring sharp lamb’s sorrel to cut through the fatty pork, and his ‘Tea & Cake’ finale got him to the final banquet, pairing hazelnut cake with a mousse made from woodruff – a woodland plant that, when dried, has a strong marzipan flavour.
We joined Chris for a day in the heart of the Wye Valley, and he kindly took us out foraging for some of his favourite wild edibles.