Find out how to cook using foraged food
In August I spent a week with my boyfriend’s family in the French countryside. We all stayed—Adrien’s parents, his sister and her husband, their three children, and us—in the family’s summer house in the village of Mens, in the foothills of the Alps. The house was last decorated in 1958, hung with 150 years’ of family portraits, furnished with old iron bedsteads and handsome mantelpiece clocks that chimed irregular hours. A little kitchen with a rusty stove gave out onto a garden and a meadow beyond. I went exploring.
It had been a rainy summer and the grass was lush. Plum trees were overladen with fruit—sticky purple globes, unripe greengages, sweet popping yellow mirabelles. Switching at the tall grasses idly with a stick, I saw three little mushrooms in a circle and, nearby, a snail trailing under a patch of bright orange nasturtiums. Supper, I thought. In the kitchen I found a paring knife and a brown paper bag and went foraging.
What makes a good meal? For a long time I thought it was the care and technique of cooking: the correct magenta interior of a steak, the right golden crispy edge to sautéed potatoes, oozy apples inside a pastry pie that came out perfectly. This is good cooking, non? But it is not necessarily good eating. A good meal has as much to do with the experience of the meal as its content. Appetite, discovery, mood, company, environment—all this contributes to essential yumminess.
Foraging, especially for a city girl like me, is experimental. The results of my efforts were mixed. My dandelion leaf salad was too bitter for the children. The cob nuts were not yet ripe. I found only 11 juicy blackberries and then forgot to put them in the apple pie, but the plum chutney I made out of a mix of ripe and unripe fruit wasn’t half bad. I made a nettle soup but it didn’t taste of much. No one had seconds. I made some crostini with local fresh cheese, topped with peppery nasturtium flowers (“Are you sure you can eat these?” asked Adrien’s sister, a doctor who runs a trauma hospital) and the fried brown mushrooms the kids had collected when they were playing in the meadow. These I had verified as edible at the pharmacy—all French pharmacists must be trained in mycology. They were sweet and delicious, and gobbled up.
The next day I went out to look for snails, even though no one except Adrien’s father and his German brother-in-law said they liked them. I found a large colony under the nasturtiums and set about purging them in an old pot. The kids pronounced, fascinated, revolted, “dé-gueul-ASSE!”—disgusting! The snails left trails of slime and displayed disquieting sexual and intelligent behaviour, sucking up against each other foot to foot, making living ladders to haul themselves over the edge of the jam jar I had put them in while I was washing out the pot. On the second morning I came down to discover they had managed, somehow, all pulling together, to dislodge the lid and escape—“Egalité, fraternité, LIBERTÉ!” laughed Adrien.
I was not to be deterred. At dusk the kids and their father gathered three dozen more that had come out to play in the cool wet garden. This time I weighed them down under a mighty ton of old roof tiles.
It was very dégueulasse, cleaning them every day. It was even more dégueulasse boiling them and then picking out their slimy curled-up bodies from the shells. I doggedly rinsed them in vinegar and water, simmered them in chicken broth for an hour and a half, stuffed them back into their shells (carefully washed and dried in the oven) with a fat thumb pat of garlic-parsley butter. At this point I was suffering the cook’s predicament of being so fed up with the prep that I had lost all interest in eating the result. The rest of dinner that night, spaghetti, got only cursory attention. There were not enough tomatoes, only basil and no parmesan.
“Oh well,” I said, putting the pasta and a gratin dish of snails, all snug, crusty and oven-baked, on the table. I had made a syrup out of a handful of rosehips stolen from the neighbour’s garden and the kids tested the dandelion flower syrup their grandfather had bought in the village. “I like this one,” said Arthur. “I want more of that one!” said his older brother Victor. “Not too much sugar at dinner!” cautioned their mother, giving in.
Everyone piled spaghetti onto their plates and slurped. I tasted a snail. It was chewy, gummy, softish with crisp edges from the browned parsley. “These are really very delicious!” said the German brother-in-law, spooning several onto his plate. “I’m just going to taste the butter sauce,” said Adrien’s sister. “Me too,” said his mother. Adrien himself, to my surprise, took one. “It is better than in a restaurant!” he said.
“OK, I’ll give you five euros if you try one,” I said to the two small boys. Arthur likes to try new flavours; for him it was easy money. Victor has a more conservative palate; he ate half of one. “Bravo!”
And there we all were, with only mediocre pasta and a dish of snails that no one had wanted, laughing and making faces and encouraging the kids. I looked around the table at the smiling faces and finally realised these are the ingredients that really matter.
In August I spent a week with my boyfriend’s family in the French countryside. We all stayed—Adrien’s parents, his sister and her husband, their three children, and us—in the family’s summer house in the village of Mens, in the foothills of the Alps. The house was last decorated in 1958, hung with 150 years’ of family portraits, furnished with old iron bedsteads and handsome mantelpiece clocks that chimed irregular hours. A little kitchen with a rusty stove gave out onto a garden and a meadow beyond. I went exploring.
It had been a rainy summer and the grass was lush. Plum trees were overladen with fruit—sticky purple globes, unripe greengages, sweet popping yellow mirabelles. Switching at the tall grasses idly with a stick, I saw three little mushrooms in a circle and, nearby, a snail trailing under a patch of bright orange nasturtiums. Supper, I thought. In the kitchen I found a paring knife and a brown paper bag and went foraging.
What makes a good meal? For a long time I thought it was the care and technique of cooking: the correct magenta interior of a steak, the right golden crispy edge to sautéed potatoes, oozy apples inside a pastry pie that came out perfectly. This is good cooking, non? But it is not necessarily good eating. A good meal has as much to do with the experience of the meal as its content. Appetite, discovery, mood, company, environment—all this contributes to essential yumminess.
Foraging, especially for a city girl like me, is experimental. The results of my efforts were mixed. My dandelion leaf salad was too bitter for the children. The cob nuts were not yet ripe. I found only 11 juicy blackberries and then forgot to put them in the apple pie, but the plum chutney I made out of a mix of ripe and unripe fruit wasn’t half bad. I made a nettle soup but it didn’t taste of much. No one had seconds. I made some crostini with local fresh cheese, topped with peppery nasturtium flowers (“Are you sure you can eat these?” asked Adrien’s sister, a doctor who runs a trauma hospital) and the fried brown mushrooms the kids had collected when they were playing in the meadow. These I had verified as edible at the pharmacy—all French pharmacists must be trained in mycology. They were sweet and delicious, and gobbled up.
The next day I went out to look for snails, even though no one except Adrien’s father and his German brother-in-law said they liked them. I found a large colony under the nasturtiums and set about purging them in an old pot. The kids pronounced, fascinated, revolted, “dé-gueul-ASSE!”—disgusting! The snails left trails of slime and displayed disquieting sexual and intelligent behaviour, sucking up against each other foot to foot, making living ladders to haul themselves over the edge of the jam jar I had put them in while I was washing out the pot. On the second morning I came down to discover they had managed, somehow, all pulling together, to dislodge the lid and escape—“Egalité, fraternité, LIBERTÉ!” laughed Adrien.
I was not to be deterred. At dusk the kids and their father gathered three dozen more that had come out to play in the cool wet garden. This time I weighed them down under a mighty ton of old roof tiles.
It was very dégueulasse, cleaning them every day. It was even more dégueulasse boiling them and then picking out their slimy curled-up bodies from the shells. I doggedly rinsed them in vinegar and water, simmered them in chicken broth for an hour and a half, stuffed them back into their shells (carefully washed and dried in the oven) with a fat thumb pat of garlic-parsley butter. At this point I was suffering the cook’s predicament of being so fed up with the prep that I had lost all interest in eating the result. The rest of dinner that night, spaghetti, got only cursory attention. There were not enough tomatoes, only basil and no parmesan.
“Oh well,” I said, putting the pasta and a gratin dish of snails, all snug, crusty and oven-baked, on the table. I had made a syrup out of a handful of rosehips stolen from the neighbour’s garden and the kids tested the dandelion flower syrup their grandfather had bought in the village. “I like this one,” said Arthur. “I want more of that one!” said his older brother Victor. “Not too much sugar at dinner!” cautioned their mother, giving in.
Everyone piled spaghetti onto their plates and slurped. I tasted a snail. It was chewy, gummy, softish with crisp edges from the browned parsley. “These are really very delicious!” said the German brother-in-law, spooning several onto his plate. “I’m just going to taste the butter sauce,” said Adrien’s sister. “Me too,” said his mother. Adrien himself, to my surprise, took one. “It is better than in a restaurant!” he said.
“OK, I’ll give you five euros if you try one,” I said to the two small boys. Arthur likes to try new flavours; for him it was easy money. Victor has a more conservative palate; he ate half of one. “Bravo!”
And there we all were, with only mediocre pasta and a dish of snails that no one had wanted, laughing and making faces and encouraging the kids. I looked around the table at the smiling faces and finally realised these are the ingredients that really matter.
