Autumn is the perfect time of year for a forage in the East Midlands
While farmers watch their crops ripen, the land elsewhere is also a riot of superabundance. Fields throw up carpets of mushrooms overnight, hedgerows bristle and sparkle with berries, and trees bend under boughs laden with fruit and nuts. All the landscape calls out: come and pick me!
For a good forage, you’ll need: gloves (the thick gardening kind that repel thorns are best) and a basket or several bags. A word of warning: you may also want to get over any phobia of spiders and earwigs…
Foraging in the East Midlands: Apples
As wild apple trees don’t really exist, picking apples is technically scrumping, a colourful word for stealing. But if friends and neighbours with orchards are happy to share their bounty, always say yes. Cooking apples—the best are Bramley—can be used to make near-instant desserts. Slice your bounty, add water, sugar and heat in a saucepan to make purees and sauces. Alternatively, remove the core, fill with mincemeat and pop into the oven for traditional baked apples. Simply serve with cream or custard.
Foraging in the East Midlands: Blackberries
Brambles are simply everywhere, and their fruit is a firm favourite with foragers. Of course, you should only pick the black ones—the berries towards the end of the branch are usually the ripest (beware of spider webs, which often hang between tendrils). The berries are good by themselves, but I like to stew them with cooking apples and tuck straight in. Alternatively, use stewed fruit in that great autumnal classic—the crumble.
Foraging in the East Midlands: Dandelion
The leaves of dandelions are—surprisingly—edible. You can eat them at any time of the year, and the young leaves are good in salads, but towards winter they’re best cooked in water, like spinach. They’re peppery and a little bitter. I’m not a fan, but some people swear by them and, y’know, they are free and all…
Foraging in the East Midlands: Elderberries
These teeny-tiny vitamin-C-rich berries grow on trees and can be difficult to pick. If you manage to find any, elderberries are great in apple pies.
Foraging in the East Midlands: Sloes
The fruit of the blackthorn is not palatable as is, but can be put to excellent use in making sloe gin. Sloes look like small olives and are ready for picking around now. My family tends to make sloe vodka rather than gin, which allows the black cherry-like flavour shine without distraction.
To make sloe gin: pick about 500g or sloes, or enough to half fill a 1-litre bottle. Sterilise the bottle before you start, then prick each sloe with a fork or cocktail stick before popping into the bottle. This doesn’t take much effort or attention—I did it while watching The Sopranos. Some people also add a good slug of caster sugar—I don’t, but if you like your drinks more sweet than sour, go for 150g caster sugar per bottle of gin. You can always add more when you drink it.
Add 500ml gin, or enough to fill the bottle. Seal tightly and shake thoroughly. Store in a cool, dark cupboard and revisit every week or so, and shake a bit more. You should wait at least two months for the drink to mature, though longer is usually better. When it’s time to enjoy the spoils of your foraging efforts, strain the gin through muslin and, hey presto, it’s ready to drink.
If you get going now, you’ll have a delicious tipple just in time for Christmas.
Go on, folks. Have a good forage.
