Spring forage: Alexander buds and Balsam Poplar

Today is officially the first of summer, and suitably equinoctal it is too - daffs in full fettle and lots of blossom in the hedgerows. For the first forage of the year, I was out gathering alexanders. This was once a potherb, so they say, brought by the Romans and naturalised around the verges and cliffs of England. It's a handsome plant whose stems can be eaten like asparagus, and the young leaves of which add a bit of zing to a spring salad. But I was gathering buds and flowers.

The flowers grow in bracts of creamy greenish white and are very attractive to insects. Under the open flowers you can find furled up against the stem a round ball of the flowers yet to come. These taste a little stronger than the flowers and can be used like capers.

A pinch of partly opened flowers (the buds are about the size of a pinhead) is a nice snack while walking, tasting something like cucumber with mustard seed: a very fresh green taste with a bit of heat to it.

Sprinkle them raw on salad leaves. We like french bread with a slice of goats cheese sprinkled with alexander buds and a little black pepper and grilled- actually the black pepper is slightly redundant, as the buds have enough zing in them. They are also good on hardboiled eggs.

I picked enough to pickle some for later use: bring some cider vinegar to the boil, drop in the buds and leave to cool before storing in a sterilised jar.

An experimental forage - not sure how it will work out - is some buds of balsam poplar. The smell of this tree in spring perhaps the most heavenly countryside scent I know, but it's oddly fugitive. Alan Bennett in his autobiographical writings describes getting a whiff of it while in company with a fellow undergraduate and thinking his companion had the odour of sanctity. He says he took some into Penhaligans, the very posh perfumier, and asking if they had something similar, but no joy.

You get a breath of it around this time of year, but it is hard to tell exactly what part of the tree it comes from. I think it is the brown carapaces of the new buds, which exude a stickiness when in sunlight. Anyway, I gathered a handful of these from a long row of the trees, a slow forage as I only wanted to take a couple from each tree in case it harms them.

Half I have put in a little jar and covered with almond oil and half in a jar with vodka - not to drink, but as a potential transporter for the scent. Last year I experimented with talcum powder but it didn't quite work: we shall see how it goes this time around. It would make an ambrosial perfume, I think, if I could get medium right.

Watch this space!

Funghi fears and fun

A terrific and terrifying article by Nicholas ('The Horse Whisperer') Evans in last Saturday's Guardian, in which he outlines the circumstances in which he and three other adults had their kidneys irreparably damaged. By irreparably, I do mean 'without hope of recovery'. In fact they would be dead if not for prompt action, and five hours a day each of dialysis. He has now accepted a kidney from his daughter, so that he (and she) each have a single working kidney. The other three people wait in hope of a transplant, and are only kept alive by long daily sessions on the dialysis machines.
There has been a certain amount of comment on this article on various science-based blogs I follow, because Evans has been in receipt of an awful lot of loony advice about giving up the medicines and the treatment and using crystals (or whatever) to 'regrow' his kidneys. Rightly should such advice be scorned and ridiculed (basic biology - livers can regrow, up to a point. Kidneys don't, possibly why two kidneys is a better evolutionary deal than just one).
But my focus here is the foraging aspect. Evans and the others ate the wrong wild mushrooms, the kind that make you feel incredibly ill but not until enough hours have passed that irreparable damage has been done already.

One paragraph really struck me:

 "The cause was much more complex than has been talked about. I did pick [the mushrooms], but it was really two people, each thinking the other one knew what he or she was doing."

So, if I read him aright, it seems that the people involved took each other's expertise for granted, perhaps both thinking 'well, not sure, but X obviously knows what they are...'

I thought of it even more this week when a friend, a long time forager, gave us some lovely funghi that he had just picked.

I've always been a bit shy about picking funghi, for the very good (it seems to me) reason that the excuse 'well, it looks a bit like...' doesn't sound so convincing when your stomach is being pumped out. I'm doing my best to learn, but have three or four times this year collected mushrooms, brought them home, and then chucked them out because I really wasn't sure enough about what I was looking at.

So, rather than accept Francis' word for it, I made spore prints, consulted several books (especially those with several photos of each species) and cross referenced.

And last night we had a delicious chanterelle omelette. Chanterelles are fairly easy - the smell particularly is distinctive, strong and pleasantly fruity.

This evening I'm going to stew some field blewitts - also distinctive, though I was not familiar with them before. I was helped in this by the delicate violet of the stalks and the scrolled and curled edges - also because one of my field guides has about 7 photos of them in different angles, which was a great help.

I'm planning to cook them slowly with leeks, bacon and beans. I'm cautiously optimistic I'll still be here next week.

Risotto with Nettles by Anna Del Conte

This is a terrific book - a memoir with recipes - which I noticed at my local library (and here's a cheer for local libraries - defend them against the cuts!) the day after I had written my Wild Brews column for Smallholder's April edition.

The thing is, my column was mainly about nettles, including a recipe for Risotto Alle Ortiche - Nettle risotto. That's why her title kind of hit me in the eye as I came up the stairs to the upper library and saw her book displayed.

My recipe version is a little different from hers though, mainly in the addition of a glass of wine to the rice at the translucent stage, and being slightly less buttery. I learnt mine in the Abruzzo, whereas hers comes from further north, in Piedmonte: that may account for it as pasturage is poorer further south.

Foraging in the fields, and foraging in libraries, bookshops and on my own over-crowded shelves are not disimilar activities.