Sea and Fresh Water Foraging

Two simple recipe ideas using wild ingredients foraged in early March

Freshwater foraging - watercress.

My walks usually involve wellington boots. Wellies are useful if you want to catch a low tide, negotiate mud or cross bogs and streams. Wadding through a shallow, fast flowing burn where watercress grows, isn’t a problem if your feet are watertight. Watercress is an early spring reward that is readily available in a stream near you.

Watercress. Lindertis, Angus

Once widely used as a potherb, watercress was a stalwart ingredient in a multitude of medicinal herbal remedies. Some ate it to prevent baldness, others to increase fertility and those who had over indulged, hoped that watercress might cure a hang-over. Watercress is nutrient-packed and has been strongly linked with maintaining good health - one of the so called super foods. I love the peppery flavour of watercress. This wild edible is useful. It can: replace microleaves (indeed, it is one) in sandwiches (watercress and egg is my firm favourite), add vivid green colour and flavour to a soup and perk up pasta at supper time. Try adding a handful of freshly chopped watercress to mashed potatoes instead of reaching for a pepper mill. One of its colloquial names is poor man's pepper. This is pertinent because in days of yore, the pungent taste of watercress avoided the use of costly spices.

The heart shaped leaves of watercress vary in colour from bright green to almost black. Its delicate, white, four petalled flowers appear in late spring. Do not pick watercress from stagnant water or where sewage drains. There is often fear of Liver Fluke (from eating watercress found on pasture land), but liver fluke is killed when watercress is cooked. That said, it is not advisable to eat 'raw' watercress that has been picked where cattle and sheep graze. Watercress becomes leggy after flowering, but with luck there will be an autumn picking. Wear wellington boots or if it's warm and you can tolerate muddy feet, forage barefoot. Take scissors and a waterproof bag, don't be greedy and try not to disturb the watercress roots. Sorrel is also in season. Its sour, lemon flavour works well with watercress.

Wild Watercress Sauce recipe taken from The Forager's Kitchen Handbook

Serves 4

50g wild watercress ( stalks and any stray roots removed)

50g blanched almonds

3 tbsps. olive oil

4 tbsps. Greek yoghurt

Tbsp. chopped sorrel

Freshly ground black pepper

Wash and dry the watercress and add with the almonds to a food processor. Blend briefly.

Add the olive oil and yoghurt and blend to mix.

Pour the watercress sauce into a saucepan. Add the finely shredded sorrel and heat over a low heat to warm through.

Serve with pasta, or as a sauce for salmon or poached chicken.

Coastal Foraging in Early March - Dulse

Dulse Palmata palmaria growing on Kelp. Isle of South Uist, Outer Hebrides.

Red Rags or False Dulse Dilsea carnosa. Askernish Beach, Isle of South Uist

Dulse was one of the first seaweeds I experimented with, in my Island kitchen. The beaches of the Hebrides are often strewn with stormcast kelp (a brown seaweed) with the red seaweed, dusle, growing on stipes as an epiphyte. The dulse glistened in the sun. I was enchanted. I stripped the red seaweed from the brown stipe, washed it in the ocean and took it back to my kitchen. My seaweed culinary adventures had begun. I do not encourage cooking with stormcast seaweed but in the Outer Hebrides, I break this rule. Look out for the interloper, Red Rags. It may be rarer and prettier than dulse, but it simply doesn’t taste as good. Mrs Lane Clarke writes of Red Rags in her 1865 pocket book, Common Seaweeds, (when it was called IIridea eldulis - botanical names change)…

'In Scotland they roast it in a frying pan but seldom will you find it without a pretty little Sea Slug or yellow Nerit or purple Trochus,enjoying the pasture God has made for them.’

Roughly chopped dulse and carrot batons, marry well together. This simple, fermented lunchbox recipe may be found in Seaweed in the Kitchen.