For most, the idea of hunting and gathering is a thing of the past, however, the Covid-19 crisis is causing some to turn to the natural food resources that lie in their back gardens.<\/p>\n
I<\/p>\n
It was an unusually hot April morning in Colchester, England, and the fields, now in full bloom, were bursting in brilliant yellows, whites and purples. Armed with a wicker basket and David Squire\u2019s book Foraging for Wild Foods, I scanned the Essex countryside for the ingredients to my first-ever foraging taster menu: stinging nettle soup; gnocchi with dandelion leaf pesto; wild garlic and stinging nettle ravioli; and, for dessert, dandelion flower cookies.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n
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<\/picture>\nThe English countryside is a prime location for a culinary adventure (Credit: Peter Llewellyn\/Getty Images)<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n
As a travel journalist who often writes about lesser-known foods, the part I miss most about travelling is trying some of the world\u2019s most unusual ingredients. Before the Covid-19 lockdown, I enjoyed nothing more than feasting on sizzling stigghiol<\/em>a (chargrilled veal intestines) on a street food tour in Sicily, or learning how to prepare ahuautle<\/a>, an ancient ingredient once eaten by Aztec emperors, in Mexico City. For a short while, home-cooking tacos al pastor<\/em><\/a> or pasta alla norma <\/em>satisfied my hunger for international flavours.<\/p>\n But there was something missing, and that was the excitement of going out into the world in search of not just recipes, but a culinary adventure<\/em>. And that\u2019s when, for the first time since my childhood, I (re)discovered the art of British foraging.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n Author Jessica Vincent: “The earliest memory I have of foraging is picking wild blackberries with my grandmother” (Credit: Mypurgatoryyears\/Getty Images)<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n The earliest memory I have of foraging is picking wild blackberries with my grandmother. Our quest for England\u2019s sweetest wild fruit led us to our local park in Banstead, Surrey, a small patch of green which, between August and October, would burst with swollen blackberries. Under strict instructions, I\u2019d carefully manoeuvre my way around the thick, sharp brambles, my eyes scanning for the darkest and shiniest berries of them all. My grandmother had learned from her mother \u2013 who, as a young evacuee during World War Two, would forage wild fruits and plants as a supplement to the meagre food rations \u2013 that the plumper, darker berries were the sweetest. Those juicy crimson-purple morsels would often be turned into blackberry crumble, the perfect sweet finish to a Sunday roast dinner.<\/p>\n The ritual of summer blackberry picking continued throughout my childhood. But, once I left home to start my adult life in London, foraging for wild foods became nothing more than a nostalgic memory. For the entirety of my university years, most of my ingredients \u2013 if not all \u2013 came plastic-wrapped from a supermarket in New Cross Gate. I didn\u2019t know it at the time, but it would take a global pandemic \u2013 and a yearning to recreate my foodie adventures from around the world \u2013 for me to dust off my foraging basket and enjoy the beautiful Essex countryside that I\u2019m lucky enough to have right on my doorstep.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n Author Jessica Vincent: “It would take a global pandemic… for me to dust off my foraging basket” (Credit: Jessica Vincent)<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n Just a five-minute walk from my house, I spotted what I was after. I approached the fierce-looking weed \u2013 its leaves armed with thousands of needle-sharp hairs \u2013 with care. My foraging handbook referred to the plant as urtica dioica<\/em>, but flashbacks of falling into a ditch and emerging with my arms and legs covered in a blistering rash when I was 12 confirmed my suspicions: it was a stinging nettle. I put on my gloves and pinched the base of the stingers, gently detaching the leaves and placing them in the safety of my forager\u2019s basket.<\/p>\n You may also be interested in: A curious dog-walker, intrigued at the sight of a young woman waist-deep in stinging nettles, asked me what I was doing from a safe distance. When I responded that I was foraging nettles for soup and ravioli, she scrunched her face in disapproval. \u201cI\u2019m not sure that sounds appetising,\u201d she said, and continued on her way.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n Stinging nettle leaves are armed with needle-sharp hairs (Credit: SergiyMolchenko\/Getty Images)<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n The dog-walker\u2019s response isn\u2019t uncommon: foraging for wild foods, particularly weeds with a knack for piercing your skin and injecting it with burning chemicals, isn\u2019t widespread in Britain nowadays. But there was a time in the UK when every person\u2019s life depended on it.<\/p>\n According to Ray Mears\u2019 Wild Food<\/a>, 32 pieces of flint found in Pakefield, Suffolk, suggest that some of the world\u2019s first hunter-gatherers roamed the lands of Britain in search of edible nuts, fruits and leaves as early as 700,000BC. Before the invention of farming and supermarkets, and at a time when virgin forests still covered most of the British Isles, our earliest ancestors used their razor-sharp knowledge of the land to sustain themselves entirely from the hundreds of British wild foods available to them. Chestnuts, crab apples, sloe berries and mushrooms, Mears says, were just some of their favourites.<\/p>\n The introduction of small-scale cultivation around 13,000 years ago, however, was the beginning of the end of foraging in Britain. As more of our hunter-gatherer ancestors turned to the convenience of growing their own crops, foraging became far less crucial to their survival. By the time Britain\u2019s agricultural revolution<\/a> reached its peak in the mid-18th Century, the ancient art of foraging was all but forgotten.<\/p>\n It would take two centuries and a world war for foraging to return en masse in Britain. As my great-grandmother experienced first-hand during World War Two, the British feared they would become vitamin deficient without imported fruits such as oranges. To combat this, Britain\u2019s Ministry of Health asked its citizens to collect rosehips<\/a> (the fruit of wild roses) to boost their vitamin C intake. Some savvy Britons also found that acorns and dandelion root made for a decent coffee substitute and provided much-needed minerals such as iron and calcium.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n Yellow dandelion flower cookies can be sweetened with vanilla extract and honey (Credit: megatronservizi\/Getty Images)<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n I found my next ingredient \u2013 easily recognisable by its sunshine-yellow flower \u2013 just metres away from the stinging nettles. Undeterred by the dog-walker\u2019s comment, I filled my wicker basket with dozens of dandelions, a common weed whose leaves, stem, flower and root have been used for their purported nutritional and medicinal value for thousands of years. The nearby wood, blanketed in lilac and cobalt-coloured bluebells, provided a bountiful supply of wild garlic, a delicate white-flowered plant whose fragrant leaf I planned to use to season my stinging nettle ravioli and dandelion pesto.<\/p>\n My basket filled to the brim, I returned home to prepare my foraged feast. First to be served was the stinging nettle soup<\/a>, a quintessentially English dish that, thanks to the discovery of 3,000 year-old food bowls in the Cambridgeshire fens<\/a>, as reported by the Guardian, can be dated to Britain\u2019s Bronze Age. The nettle, which loses its sting as soon as it\u2019s cooked, gave the soup a delicious earthy taste similar to cooked spinach, cabbage or kale. Inspired by Jamie Oliver\u2019s recent Instagram post<\/a>, my other dishes took a fusion approach, combining ancient British ingredients with Italian techniques.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n Stinging nettle soup is a quintessentially English dish (Credit: IngridHS\/Getty Images)<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n The dandelion leaves were turned into \u201cpesto\u201d by blending them with cherry tomatoes, basil and ricotta, but the result had a bitter, leafy green flavour. However the nettles, which I pan-fried with butter, leeks and nutmeg, infused the ravioli with a rich, nutty taste reminiscent of wild mushrooms. With my bright yellow dandelion flower cookies<\/a>, sweetened with vanilla extract and honey, to finish, my foraged meal was complete, and, to my surprise, quite delicious.<\/p>\n When I think of our British hunter-gatherer ancestors foraging the land, barefooted and armed with nothing but a rudimentary flint tool, I think of not how far we\u2019ve come but of how much knowledge we\u2019ve lost. There was a time where we\u2019d distinguish an edible mushroom from a poisonous one with a quick glance or a sniff of the air. Now, few people would be able to identify an onion in a crop field.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n Wild garlic is a delicate white-flowered plant with a fragrant leaf (Credit: Peter Llewellyn\/Getty Images)<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n This phenomenon isn\u2019t just happening in Britain: according to Mears, hunting and gathering will \u201ccease to exist on Earth\u201d within the next generation. But perhaps, just like in 1939, it would take another \u2013 albeit entirely different \u2013 crisis to once again prompt us to value the natural resources we each have in our backyards.<\/p>\n Author Jessica Vincent foraged her ingredients on her permitted one-hour daily walk. The UK\u2019s Covid-19 safety measures, including the practice of social distancing, were followed at all times. If you forage in your local area, be sure to do so responsibly.<\/em><\/p>\n —<\/p>\n Join more than three million BBC Travel fans by liking us on <\/em>Facebook<\/a>, or follow us on <\/em>Twitter<\/a> and <\/em>Instagram<\/a>.<\/em><\/p>\n If you liked this story, <\/em>sign up for the weekly bbc.com features newsletter<\/a> called “The Essential List”. A handpicked selection of stories from BBC Future, Culture, Worklife and Travel, delivered to your inbox every Friday.<\/em><\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/article>\n![\"Author](\"https:\/\/ychef.files.bbci.co.uk\/976x549\/p08cbnf6.jpg\" "\\"Author")
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