Welcome to wild-food.net

Welcome to my web site which supports the fungus forays and seashore forays I run in Dorset, Devon, Hampshire and elsewhere. It also supports my three foraging books - these are Hedgerow, Mushrooms, and Seashore sections linked at the top right of this page. These provide (or will provide shortly) extra content for my three foraging books. Here is some for the Hedgerow book.

New: I get the opportunity to travel around with my forays but for the first time I will be going (slightly) overseas. On the 1st and 2nd of September I will be in Sark taking seashore and hedgerow forays based at the truly splendid Stocks Hotel. It should be an amazing couple of days. Visit here for details.

New: I will be taking a foray at the Claydon Estate in Buckinghamshire with the Carriage House Restaurant on Sunday 30th September. I have taken several at this venue over the years and it is a lovely day with some splendid fungi. Please contact Sophia or Tim to book.

New: I have added two forays which I run in Kent at Moon Down. This was great fun last year. Moon Down is a marvellous place for fungi because of its enormously varied habitats.

The spot of rain over the last few days encourages me for the first time in two or three years to go looking for St George's Mushrooms. These are are safe a bet as you could hope for as they are distinctive and few other mushrooms grow in spring. They are white to off-white all over, very firm in texture and smell very strongly of raw pastry. The strong smell is moderated by cooking, so don't let it put you off. Grassland and pathsides. Look for it around St George's Day!

Books:
I have written three books on foraging for the River Cottage Handbook series:

The Mushroom Handbook is written to provide the easiest possible introduction to the rather worrying world of wild mushrooms. I cover most of the common edible species with descriptions of dangerous look-alikes. There is a simple key and extensive guidance on what to look for when trying to identify a species.

There are also some recipes!

Writing the Edible Seashore was a big adventure for me and I share in its pages what I already knew and what I learned in the writing of it. Seaside plants, seaweeds, crustaceans and molluscs are all covered. Again there is a chapter with some pretty good recipes.

My most recent foraging book is Hedgerow. This fills in all the gaps left by the other two, exploring the vast amount of wild food available from hedgerow, field, heath, wood and bog. This time I wrote all the recipes myself (with the invaluable help on some of them from Pam Corbin - the lady who wrote the excellent Preserves Handbook). I can highly recommend Juniper Toffee and Elderflower Delight!