To anyone interested in seasonality and in produce, to any bakers, or cooks at all, I urge you if you never have to try foraging. This is an plea that comes with caveats; always know what you’re picking, and always make sure you get permission.
Growing up we properly foraged in the wild which can be dangerous, but it was really formative to me. When I was a kid it was lots of purslane, blackberries and violets; when I interviewed at Chez Panisse my dad foraged the wild huckleberries I cooked with; and when I was writing Love Is a Pink Cake both my parents were despatched to seek out wild fennel. When I moved to London, urban foraging became an essential part of my weeks. A short walk away from Violet, in the Hackney Marshes and Walthamstow Wetlands, you can find blackberries, elderflowers, angelica, rosehips, nettles, sloe, fennel tops, and fig leaves. It feels so far away from the city, a perfect mini mini-break after a busy week.
When I was in Sicily a couple of weeks ago the entire island was a bit of a foraging paradise. Because of the presence of Mount Etna, the active volcano on the east coast of the island, the soil is so rich. Everyone I spoke to referred to Etna reverentially as She, and it wasn’t hard to see why in days gone by people venerated the earth when the same phenomenon that gives so much life can also violently take it away. On windy days when the mountain is throwing out ash there will be a blanket of sand-like black ash across the ground outside, fertilising the citrus, grapes, and all other crops grown there.
Rocca Delle Tre Contrade, the beautifully restored villa we stayed at, was formerly a community winery, and then, in the 50s, a citrus grove. Now the owners practice low intervention growing with a focus on maintaining biodiversity, so under the lemons and blossoming orange trees grow all sorts of different plants to attract birds and insects. There was wild garlic, wild asparagus, and wild cabbage and in the kitchen garden lemon verbena, rose geranium, and datterini tomatoes. There were fig trees that we took from and Dora Magueri, the chef at the villa, picked wild herbs each day. The terroir of everything we ate and drank, from the vegetables to wine made from native grapes, reinforced the spiritual and primal connection to the mountain. We made an ice cream from the fig leaves, the recipe for which you’ll find below.
When our indefatigable hosts, Jon and Marco, took us for a drive to visit the Gustinella Winery and Camuto pistachio farm on the slopes of Etna I kept begging to stop because I could see what I thought was wild fennel (it wasn’t), and wild gorse (also wasn’t). With the fennel, it was easier to tell – whatever this plant was it didn’t have the distinctive smell – but the plant I thought was gorse shared the same coconutty fragrance. I couldn’t help but eat some of it only to learn from Marco that it was actually Scotch broom which can cause vomiting and that other inconvenience... Everyone kept checking on me for the rest of the day, but luckily it was nothing a little of Sonia’s rosasto wine couldn’t cure.
It's so important if you do go out foraging to really know what you’re doing, or to be with people who do. Plants can look so similar, but they vary from region to region and so much knowledge is embedded in the local community. I’ve used google searches or apps before, and they can be really inaccurate.
When I got back to London, I headed out to Hackney Marshes with a small team from Violet. We met on Sunday evening and picked fig leaves from trees along the river Lea, then drank wine and ate treats I’d brought back with me as dusk fell. That week my head chef Niko roasted the leaves that had been washed and put away, and we made a custard to fill a meringue roulade dotted with incredible French Gariguette strawberries for a weekend special.
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