Viva Lewes Issue #119 August 2016

FOOD
Wild salad
Herbalist Alice Bettany and her twelve-year-old assistant Gracie Chick prepare
a wild lunch at the Wowo campsite, using ingredients foraged from the land
I grew up on the campsite. My family own it, so I
spent a lot of time here when I was younger and I
got to learn a lot about wild food. I’m now a trained
herbalist and I run workshops here in foraging and
wild medicine for adults and kids. Gracie’s family live
at Wowo- although they’re about to go off on a big
adventure - and I’ve been teaching her about wild
food, and now she helps me with running courses for
families. We’ve prepared this salad together.
The main base is the chickweed. Lots of people will
probably know this one, it’s common in creams and
ointments for any redness or inflammation, like psoriasis
or eczema, and it tastes really cool and juicy.
Gracie’s tip: you can tell chickweed apart from other similar-looking
plants because it has a Mohican - tiny hairs
which only grow along one side of the stem.
Next we’re adding some lime tree leaves. They’re not
actually from trees which grow limes, they’re sometimes
called Linden or Tilia. We’d normally only
harvest the leaves in April or May, because by now
the leaves would have gone too tough to eat in a salad,
but we found a little patch of them growing under
another tree which seem to still be replicating youth.
We’re also using something called ‘fat hen’, which
grows in abundance and chickens love it - it’s a
real treat if you bring some back for your hens.
Gracie's tip: you can spot the leaves because they look like
they have fairy dust sprinkled on them!
Then we’re going to add lots of different wild flowers.
We’re using dandelion leaves and petals, but the
leaves are quite bitter so only a few of those. We’ve
taken the petals off the green sepals at the base and
we’re only putting the petals into the salad.
Some of the wild flowers we’re using have that delicious,
mucilaginous quality, which is really soothing
for anything from a sore throat to IBS, for example
the calendula, these are the orange-coloured petals;
daisies, which you can eat whole; mallow, the two
kinds we’re using are musk and common mallow, and
mullein, which are the little yellow flowers. Then we
add nasturtium, which have a sweet, peppery flavour.
Next we’re using Himalayan balsam flowers. Most
people in foraging harvest the seeds. They come out
in September and they have these amazing seedpods
which, as soon as you touch them, pop out and the
seeds go everywhere. If you cup your hands around
the pod before all the seeds pop out you can toast
them over the fire. They taste more nutty than seedy
- they’re a really good wild alternative to pine nuts.
After that we sprinkle in some oxeye daisy petals.
These are the giant daisies which have been covering
the roadside verges recently, although they’re coming
toward the end of their season now. The centre
bit has a very strong, bitter flavour, so we just use the
petals. We’re also adding chicory, honeysuckle and
borage flowers, as well as clover leaves and flowers.
Finally, we’re going to sprinkle over the nettle seeds.
From July to September it’s prime seeding time for
nettles and once they’ve gone to seed it’s best not to
eat the leaves. But the seeds are delicious; the flavour
is like when you toast seeds to sprinkle on a salad.
For a little bit of sweetness, we’re drizzling our salad
with some blackberry vinegar we made earlier. Best
enjoyed outdoors! Interview by Rebecca Cunningham
Alice: sacredseeds.org.uk
Gracie: graciechicksblog.wordpress.com
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