Foraging Indian style…well it started off as a walk. Sometimes i stay in Butterfly Hill, a second, more remote orphanage buried deep in the Andrha Pradesh countryside. Every day i stay there, i take 6 or 7 kids along with me for a long walk into the forest or the surrounding countryside. The kids know a lot about edible and useful plants that grow there…and i KNOW about the dangers of irresponsible foraging but the kids eat this stuff all the time, we are in some fairly remote countryside here and for once there is almost no pollution…here are some things they taught me…
Find a suitable branch of a neem tree, strip the bark back…gnaw the inside till it begins to fray and then use to clean teeth…It works really well…it tastes bitter, antiseptic and kind of refreshing…
The kids really love these berries, in Telegu they are called parikaylu and i can’t find anything about them online anywhere. They taste sweet and sour with a large seed in the middle and apparently they are packed with vitamin C.
Tamarind…the “fruits” hang from the tree looking a little like broad bean pods but you eat the whole thing…It tastes really good…crunchy, intense, sour, tangy, fresh…like tamarind!. You can’t eat too much though as it does crazy things to your mouth and it’s especially good if you dip it in a little salt…
This is called mogali rekulu around here, i thought it was aloe vera but apparently it’s not. They use the sap here to help heal cuts and grazes and also they strip the fibres to make threads…
We meet 2 women we know along the way and everyone wants a picture…
not at all edible but very beautiful and all over the place, a dathura or datura flower…
braid burn…
Rounding off this week of foraging posts…
Inspired by my brief sojourn in Italy, i decided to have a stab at foraging back here in Edinburgh. Was told that there was loads of wild garlic* by the hermitage braid burn not so far away from my house.
It was not hard to find, for a start the whole area smelled like a giant tossed salad and there was a carpet of edible plants as far as the eye could see.
standing in a giant salad, the air is pungent with the scent of garlicky onion
Am suddenly very aware of being a rank amateur and the dangers of being overly keen and not careful enough in plant identification, its a bit scary doing this on your own with no one to ask, is this right??? Having checked first with the park rangers to be sure the area was not toxic and that it was safe to eat the wild plants, i gathered about a kilo of the stuff (obviously you have to wash everything carefully- this is a dog walkers paradise – and i tried to gather a bit off route). I was told that this was not normal wild garlic, but few-flowered leeks (Allium paradoxum) also known as few-flower garlic – another member of the lily family. I was also advised that it was very strong (which i could smell) and to use just the leaves. On my way home i stopped off in my local organic food store, they were selling the very same stuff for £3 per 100g!!! so theoretically i had gathered £30 worth of food for free…anyway i made some soup out of it.
Few-flowered garlic and pea soup
method:
Sweat some finely chopped onion in some butter, when soft add your roughly chopped thoroughly washed garlic leaves – this will cook down very quickly just like spinach. Add some stock (i had some good stuff left over from poaching a chicken) and some peas (frozen or fresh) boil for a minute or so and then blitz with a blender till smooth. Finish off with a little cream and season to taste, cook for another minute or so.
The really strong smelling leaves transform through the cooking process into something far more gentle and sweet than you would imagine, the result is something that tastes like a really fresh leek soup with a hint of pea , spring onion and garlic that does not need to be tampered with much, hence a simple seasoning of salt and black pepper and a little freshly grated nutmeg, but i think that a few slivers of parmesan cheese in your serving bowl would not go amiss.
So anyway i ate it…it tasted good…and half a day later i appear not to have poisoned myself…result!…next…
* Other edible stuff currently growing in the braid burn area (though don’t ask me what it all looks like yet), hawthorn leaves, leaves from the lime tree , wood sage, ground elder (though the rangers said this was edible but not very nice…maybe i will give it a miss), young nettles and wood sorrel.
other foodie posts on this blog:
further adventures in foraging
cooking the haul
foraging2
foraging
more foodie questions
foodie questions
nose to tail,
(s)light relief,
pulpo a la gallega
the matanza
morcilla and dying arts
jamòn serrano
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Posted in commentary, documentary, food, info/stats, recipe, scotland
Tagged Allium paradoxum, braid burn, edinburgh, Few-flower garlic soup, few-flowered garlic, few-flowered leeks, foraging, free food