Why I forage: Emerald Devonshire

This week we meet Emerald Devonshire to hear how foraging child becomes foraging parent

How did you start foraging?

I suppose it was picking stuff from the garden with my mum when I was a kid. Growing up in the countryside, she was a garden designer and my grandad was a gamekeeper so I got used to being outdoors. If I was naughty mum would throw me out of the house to play and, being quite a greedy child, I always ended up looking for things to eat! 

I remember picking garlic chives or those little white flowers from dead nettles, which look like nettles but without the sting. You can suck the nectar right out and it tastes just like honey. That’s the kind of curiosity I’m trying to pass on to my own two-year-old now I’m a parent.

Why do you forage?

Not much has changed since I was a kid – I’m still hungry! – but now there’s also a mentality of common sense. With the cost of living and having two kids, it just makes sense to save money and my children honestly eat berries like they’re going out of fashion. 

So I guess, why wouldn’t you use it when it’s free and right there? I don’t travel to any special foraging locations but if I happen to be somewhere I’d always have a look and see what’s around. On holiday maybe that’s lemons, figs and pomegranates, but there’s just as much on our doorstep.

One essential you can’t go foraging without?

Oh, maybe my pair of mini clippers, which I always carry in my bag just in case, or a penknife my grandad gave me. That’s really handy for all sorts and quite special.

Favourite foraging season?

Probably the autumn or just that last bit of summer. That’s when you get giant puffball mushrooms (must check for any sign of yellowing, or worse browning, as they will cause severe gastric distress) which I love to make steaks from, but the seasons are getting more and more delayed and it was so hot right into September last year. That said, I love the elderflower out now – even if you need a lot of it to make anything and it’s a bit of a slog to get all the bugs out!

Biggest foraging faux pas?

Oh, the day I went to get IVF treatment to try for my second daughter my mum was looking after my eldest. They had gone out for a walk together and she said she had found loads of wild garlic. So there I was, very potentially pregnant, and we decided to make something with the garlic for dinner.

It got to the point we were actually cooking the leaves when I thought I’d double-check my ID books to be extra careful. On closer look it turned out to be some sort of very similar-looking daffodil-type leaf that would have made us horrendously ill so that was a close call and potentially a £2,000 treatment down the drain!

What would you love to forage but haven’t found yet?

More mushrooms. Definitely. That’s the focus this year. I didn’t actually like mushrooms until very recently but after Covid-19 I lost my taste and it’s taken a full two years to get back to normal. So now I want to try everything again. I just need to do some proper research which I haven’t quite had the time or brainpower to do since my second came along, but this is the year!

Favourite foraging memory? 

When I was at school I actually once got a detention for picking and eating all the blackberries growing along the back field behind the school site. I think technically it was for being out of bounds but that’s a good example of how I started foraging and my priorities as a child!

What’s your favourite way to eat foraged food? 

I make the best sloe rum. Maybe that’s a bit basic. Everyone uses sloes – we fight for it around here and you’ll see neighbours trying to beat each other into the field after a frost to get the best fruit. It’s a bit ridiculous, but then I do it too!

Top tip to foragers just starting out?

Go with someone that’s done it before. It’ll make it easier if they know the area. Just keep it simple, ask what’s local, use your hands or kitchen scissors, and get a good app or reference book. I use my iPhone’s plant app ‘Picture This Plant Identifier’ if I’m out and about but have some failsafe books to double check in Ray Mears Wild Food book and the RHS Encyclopedia of Plants and Flowers.  

My other tip is just: be resourceful. As I said, you don’t need fancy new equipment, and if a recipe says you have to strain with a cheese cloth, the reality is a pair of clean tights will do, or just a pack of baby muslins. You don’t need to spend money on gadgets, just get out there!

Why I forage: Drew and Beth Nuttall

This week we meet  Drew and Beth Nuttall, who prove those who forage together, stay together

How did you start foraging?

D: In a way it’s just something that I’ve always done. I do it more now and have more knowledge but it definitely stemmed from being a child, picking blackberries with my parents and getting used to the idea of being able to forage wild food. Then in adulthood you realise there’s more than just blackberries out there. That said, I definitely got more enthusiastic about foraging after meeting Beth.

B: I think growing up in the countryside with a “countryside-y” family you just learn the basic blackberry, hazelnut side of foraging from a young age. Then as you get older you realise you can forage at different levels. You can do the standard hedgerow stuff and then you can look beyond it and start really seeing every plant when you go out. You find yourself wondering what it is, if it’s edible, if it’s got medicinal properties and that’s where I got it five or six years ago. There’s just so many plants we can make use of.

Why do you forage?

D: I think there are a variety of reasons, but cost comes into it. I don’t mean we actively forage to save money but it is a resource that’s readily available and it makes sense to take advantage of it. It’s also a way of getting food without shipping it across the world, so for me it’s about connecting directly with a food source and my local environment. Mass-produced, preserved food, on the other hand, has a much lower nutritional value and you’ll notice the loss in flavour too. 

B: Exactly, plus the bonus that foraged foods don’t come wrapped in plastic packaging. Sometimes it’s also simply the case of foraging for things like hawberries that you can’t find on supermarket shelves. For me, I’m also fascinated by medicinal plants. There’s one called the cuckoo flower, or lady’s smock, and I hadn’t realised at first but it’s fantastic for reducing period pain. You dry it and drink it as tea, and it works so much better than any paracetamol or supermarket pain relief. Those kinds of discoveries are just so exciting to me.

One essential you can’t go foraging without?

D: It might sound simple but a big stick for hooking branches down.

B: We’re lucky Drew is quite tall but a long stick or a stool is great to get those hard to reach fruits, flowers and berries. 

Favourite foraging season?

D: Autumn. It feels like you’re connected to that sense of harvest and it marks the start of more hearty meals. In spring, much of what you forage is quite delicate. It can enhance dishes but it’s definitely less filling. 

B: Definitely autumn too. The nuts and berries feel so much more substantial and I love the season for its cold cosiness. In spring you have to be much more knowledgeable as a lot of the very young plants aren’t so distinctive yet so it also just requires that extra level of concentration and skill.

Biggest foraging faux pas?

B: We’re quite lucky in not having had any serious story-worthy incidents but we’ve definitely learnt the perils of not using something you’ve foraged straight away. Not realising you have decomposing raw elderberries on your work surface was definitely a mistake – raw elderberries contain toxins that can cause nausea and gastro issues!

Best foraging find?

B: For me, it was the first time I found wood sorrel. It was something I’d been reading about and wanting to try for a long time when, out on a walk with family, I finally spotted some. It was very exciting and tasted just as good as I had hoped – tart and sweet.

D: I also remember one year when we just had a massive number of hazelnuts on the tree right outside our window and we dried them at a very, very low temperature in the oven so they wouldn’t spoil throughout the year. They make the best beetroot and hazelnut cake! Or, back when I was working for a landscape gardener, in the extensive grounds of one client, we found this amazing Dryad’s Saddle Bracket fungus. Delicious fried!

What would you love to forage but haven’t found yet?

B: I’d love to find miner’s lettuce. I don’t actually know if it grows here but I follow an American forager account who seems to have quite a similar climate to the south of England and she’s got a lot of recipes using it I’d love to try.   

Favourite foraging memory? 

B: Trying to pick elderberries sitting on Drew’s shoulders springs to mind. 

D: Exactly what I was thinking, piggyback elderberry picking!  Or just all the strange ways we’ve climbed and balanced on things to get something. But also I guess thinking back to my childhood by the canal, those early memories picking blackberries really stick with you even as an adult.

Top tip to foragers just starting out?

B: We’re quite old school so don’t have the apps, but my starting book was one of the classics, Food for Free by Richard Mabey. It’s got heaps of great stuff in it and recipes for inspiration. I also think I’d advise anyone starting out to just learn one plant at a time. If you’re out and something looks distinctive – go home and try and look it up. Learn how you could use it and if you might mistake it for anything else. Then try and identify it again. That way you very quickly build up knowledge and confidence. 

D: I completely agree with Beth and would add if you know anyone or a friend that knows a little more than you, try and go out with them. You learn so much more with friends and I think it helps normalise foraging as a practical and social activity, not just something old people do!

Why I forage: Adi Staempfli

This week we meet Adi Staempfli who shares how his upbringing in a Swiss village nurtured his love for fungi

How did you start foraging?

I grew up in Switzerland and, being Swiss, foraging is really much more part of our culture. That’s not to say everyone goes foraging – in my family it wasn’t part of our tradition – but when I was 14 one of the other kids in our neighbourhood asked me whether I wanted to go foraging with his dad. That’s how it started and I was just immediately hooked. 

In Switzerland every village or town also has a mycological association and, and at the federal level, there’s an exam people can take to become local mushroom controllers or in Swiss, “Pilzkontrolle”. It’s actually a really tough qualification and they are amazing people who then offer a free service where anyone can bring a basket of foraged mushrooms and they go through it with you, telling you what is safe and what each specimen is. 

So, I started spending all the time I had in mushroom season just out in the forest exploring, gathering mushrooms and bringing the baskets back to learn all I could. By the time I was 18, they actually told me there was no reason to come back anymore and that gave me the confidence to go out and do it myself. Since then, I’ve been foraging.   

Why do you forage?

I think part of what attracted me to foraging when I was a child, was having the opportunity to be on my own, just out in the forest and engaging with life. Every time you find a mushroom, especially if it’s one of your favourites, it’s just such a rush, like a dopamine hit or a cry of joy. I think it’s a kind of alignment and an immediate connection to an ancient way of being.

One essential you can’t go foraging without?

That would be my basket. My wife has given me plenty of mushroomy presents over the years including my basket, although I also always take my beautiful Italian mushroom knife. It’s got a folding curved blade and a clip with a brush on it so it’s just classic for mushrooms. 

Biggest foraging faux pas?

I’m reminded of one by my partner all the time. When we had kids I became much more careful with the mushrooms I dish up, but this one day I decided to pick a specific type of ink cap. 

Ink caps can be totally fine but there is a risk if you drink alcohol with them, they’ll act like the drugs you’d give to someone struggling with alcohol dependency. Essentially, if you do drink alcohol with them, you’ll soon be vomiting. Luckily, we didn’t that evening but I’m reminded of it enough that it’ll never happen again. It was a long time ago though and definitely an outlier!

Best foraging find?

Maybe the best story is that we used to take our kids on a holiday where we would pull a horse drawn caravan from village to village through France, just travelling through the woods. I’d always joke that I would go out and find three kilograms of ceps to bring home, as they’re my favourite mushrooms, and everyone would always laugh at me because it would never happen. 

Then one year we got back from the holiday and I went to one of my spots outside of London and there really were kilos upon kilos of ceps. Sometimes you just get years like that and that was the best of my life.

What would you love to forage but haven’t found yet?

There’s one species called Horn of Plenty – they’re these little black mushrooms loosely in the family of chanterelles, and I had a great patch of them back when we lived in Switzerland which I could fill a basket from. So delicious. They have this almost smoky flavour when dried but I’m still looking for them here in the UK. They’re the elusive mushroom I’m always keeping an eye out for. 

What’s your favourite way to cook foraged food? 

I always like to eat the first ceps of the year raw in the forest – it’s a wonderful moment. It tastes all nutty and sweet but in terms of cooking mushrooms, I’d always just start with a mix of olive oil and butter and shallow fry them with salt pepper, and garlic to keep it simple. That said, I make and sell my own foraged mushroom jerky too. It’s great on scrambled eggs or pasta, but also fantastic on its own.

Top tip to foragers just starting out?

It can be really overwhelming when there are so many different mushroom varieties so I’d say start by learning how to differentiate between groups of mushrooms and the first I would recommend are boletes. These are mushrooms with a spongy underside to their cap. There aren’t many mushrooms in that group that will cause you trouble and certainly none that could kill you. So, familiarise yourself with one species in that family, like a cep or a birch bolete, and start from there.

My second tip would be to join specialist Facebook groups like Mushroom Foraging UK where you can upload pictures of your finds and where you found them. There, group moderators often help safely identify what you’ve found just like the Pilzkontrolle and there are featured posts and guidelines which can be good starting points. That said, always try and cross-check. If you know someone personally that’s always best and if you can, go out foraging with them or take a course to do in person because foraging isn’t just about identifying a single mushroom or its Latin name, it’s about the whole environment and getting a feel for the entire experience.