Foraging

If you go down to the woods today, you just might bump into Leslie Williams.

Described as the "season of mists and mellow fruitfulness" by that fellah Keats, autumn is the perfect time to find free food. Between now and the first frosts there is ample produce out there waiting to be foraged and all it costs is a little time.

First piece of advice is to purchase Food for Free by Richard Mabey, which covers everything from ceps to samphire and bilberries to walnuts. A second book dedicated to mushrooms is also useful for comparing difficult to identify species.

Blackberries are the easiest treasure to find with every hedgerow in Ireland containing bushes of varying quality. Blackberry jam is wonderful and has a rustic edge you don't get from other fruits such as blackcurrant or raspberry or strawberry. Adding apple pulp seems to help the jam set while not diminishing the blackberry flavour, but is not absolutely necessary. Blackberries also make excellent ice cream and sorbets and can be used in tarts and summer puddings. The sweetest berries are the ones at the bottom of the bunch and it is best to pick only the ones that come away from the stalk easily.

Locating a bottle of Crème de Mure (the blackberry equivalent of Crème de Cassis) is also a must for many blackberry recipes, but Crème de Cassis will also work. I have never seen it for sale in Ireland but I always make sure to purchase it when in France where it costs about 5 euros per bottle.

Also in hedgerows you will often find elderberries, which ripen at a similar time to blackberries. While they are not the most versatile fruit, they can be used for bulking out a blackberry recipe or adding to apple tarts or indeed for making wine.

Wild fruits such as crab apples and damsons should also be findable with damsons coming into their season this month. While damsons are too bitter to eat raw they make excellent jam on their own or combined with other fruit (or even marrows/courgettes as a recipe in my battered old Maura Laverty cook book suggests). Sloes should also be available this month for making sloe gin; but apparently it is best to wait until after the first frost to pick them as it softens their skins.

Wild Mushrooms are of course the real prize at this time of year but I must confess to having been less than successful at this pursuit. Ceps are said to grow best in native woods, especially under beech trees. However last year I found a handful of good size ceps (porcini in Italian) in edible condition in a pine forest in the Wicklow mountains, but also evidence of many more that had obviously been growing undisturbed for weeks and were completely maggot ridden. These ceps made a wonderful spaghetti sauce simply fried in olive oil and butter with some shallots and garlic and finished off with some cream.

This year I have yet to find ceps (I think it may be a little early for them) but I did find some chanterelles in a small copse containing a mix of trees and these I used in a simple omelette to great effect. I sweated the chanterelles for a few minutes in olive oil as they are quite a firm fleshed mushroom and then simply added the beaten egg plus some seasoning.

Field mushrooms like meadows, particularly those with horses, so it is said. However I have even found these in Marlay Park beside a football pitch and searched many a meadow strewn with horse dung to no avail, so there is no set pattern and this is part of the joy (and frustration) of the hunt for mushrooms.

My advice is not to bother with anything you aren't certain about as although there are only a few poisonous mushrooms, they can be deadly. Bring two books and check your harvest thoroughly to be sure you have in fact picked what you thought you picked. The season for sweet chestnuts is also almost upon us so those of you living near west Waterford have a treat in store.

There are hundreds of sweet chestnut trees around Cappoquinn and Lismore and I remember gathering them as a child with my mother when visiting her relations. I haven't seen them in other parts of the country to the same extent but they should grow pretty much anywhere in our climate so ask around.

Hazelnuts are also available shortly and well worth gathering for Halloween. Beech nuts are very fiddly but taste quite good and this year I intend attempting to make oil from them as described in the Mabey book mentioned above.

There are endless things you could search for but the list above should start you off for now. Look on these forays as a walk with a purpose and even if you find no ceps or chanterelles you are guaranteed to find blackberries. Remember also that children can usually be persuaded to help and will happily do much of the legwork. Happy hunting.

Blackberry Jam and Apple Jam

1 lb Apples (I used some wind fall eaters from the back garden)
3 lb Blackberries
3 lb sugar (or more to taste)

Peel core and chop apples and boil in a little water until very soft and then push through a sieve. Combine the apple pulp with the blackberries and sugar in a large saucepan (I use a wonderful copper conserve pan purchased in a French supermarket for around 20 euro). Bring slowly to a boil and cook fairly rapidly for approximately 30-40 minutes, stirring regularly, until the Jam will set (test a teaspoon full on a saucer).

(If you wish to omit the apples add the juice of a lemon and a glass of water and cook as above, but you may need to use jam sugar to assist in the setting of the jam).

Blackberry Ice Cream

(adapted from Ices by Caroline Liddell and Robin Weir)

1 lb Blackberries
5.25 oz Caster Sugar
2 Tbs Crème de Mure (Crème de Cassis could be substituted at a push but will change the flavour)
Juice of 1 lemon 16 fl oz Cream

Combine blackberries and sugar in a food processor and blend for 1 minute. Push through a plastic sieve to remove seeds. Whip cream very lightly to add a little extra volume and add blackberry syrup and lemon juice. Start the ice-cream machine and churn until the consistency of whipped cream. Transfer to plastic tub, top with greaseproof paper and a lid and freeze. If you don't have an ice-cream maker (a source of endless pleasures in my house) then still freeze the cream/fruit pulp mixture beating occasionally as it freezes to inhibit the formation of ice crystals.

Blackberry Sorbet

(also from Ices by Liddell and Weir)

Blackberry sorbet can be made by simmering 1lb blackberries with 8 fluid ounces of sugar syrup (half sugar half water) for a few minutes and then liquidizing and pouring through a sieve to remove the seeds. Add 2tbs each of Crème de Mure and lemon juice and still freeze or place in ice cream maker.

Click here to buy Food for Free

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