We stopped at Stoke Lock and cooked up a feast in the evening for fifteen guests. Despite my concerns that we wouldn’t have enough food, the experimental cooks aboard the floating kitchen conjured up enough to feed everyone. We sampled nettle and hazlenut tart with hawthorn chutney, wild cabbage stew, foraged salad, apple crumble, and lots of gorse flower wine that I’d made in the spring.

In the morning we returned slowly back up the river. Annwen Jones guided us in some medicine-making from the plants we’d foraged: We made comfrey ointment for joints and sprains, and elderberry syrup to ward off the flu.

The river is a different world. A slower paced, thoughtful, connected space. The river embodies the contradictions of the meeting of cities and nature: water that glitters despite its grime, pockets of wildness and abundance between industrial sites, an apple tree flourishing near to the dual carriageway that bridges the Trent.  It’s an edge, a hinterland – and traversing the river reveals the behinds of places, the bits you don’t normally see. The river is also a corridor: travelling by narrow boat is slow-motion escape as we slide out of the city. Making time to be here changes time, twenty-four hours becomes a week, we are out of the ordinary.

Over the weekend, the Field Kitchen cooked rosehip soup (not an entirely successful experiment!); nettle and comfrey fritters; mugwort pancakes;  salads of chickweed, fat hen and plantain; elderberry, blackberry and crabapple pie; and delicious ripe plums.

Cooking on the rocket stove proved challenging at times, and the pancakes were a little scrambled… but each group had an intimate picnic by the river, and I hope left inspired by the possibilities of finding food in our own localility.

Many thanks to Wayne Burrows for the photos!

G is for Gluttony was one of eight ‘postcapitalist interventions’ taking place from 16-21 June 2009, as part of C.R.A.S.H Culture and Artsadmin‘s festival:  ’2 Degrees: Art, Activism and the Global Climate Emergency’.

The City’s Secrets

I set out on this experiment expecting to find little in the way of edible plants in the Square Mile. But riding a mobile kitchen around the heart of London was full of surprises. Each day I moved slowly through the city streets, looking for pockets of green nestled between banks and office blocks. Foraging breeds slowness, and it was a remarkable experience to move around this area – where everybody is in a hurry – at a speed governed by plants. Following spots of green on the map, and my nose, I stumbled upon unexpected abundance. Delicious june berries driping off a row of decorative trees, wild rocket sprouting out of London Wall, a defiant field of chickweed occupying a flowerbed next to the Barbican.

The maps below are a record of my four days foraging in the city, and the meals I created as a result.  Many thanks to everybody who accompanied me and tasted the fruits of the City.

Wednesday: North(ish)

EuropeArab bank window box: Rosemary> Finsbury Circus: dry sticks> Girdlers Hall: June berries> Memorial garden, Lamb street: Two stawrberries> Car park, Lamb street: Wintercress> Fortune Street Park: Elderflowers> The Royal Statistical society: Bay leaves> Bunhill Buriel Ground: Chickweed, Lime Leaves, Plantain, Fat Hen, Dandilion> Banner street flats: Fennel and oregano> Quakers garden: Mallow, Mugwort, Lime Flowers, Dead Nettle flowers; Bittercress.

The Field Kitchen Cooked:

Mallow leaf soup  seasoned with foraged herbs; A salad of lime leaves, wintercress, chickweed, plantain, fat hen, fennel, strawberries, mallow flowers, deadnettle flowers & borage flowers; juneberries; lime flower tea.

Thursday: West(ish)

Cannon street, abandoned corporate building: Bittercress> St Pauls Cathederal: Lavender, Rose, Lime Leaves> London Wall: Wild rocket, chickweed, mugwort> Aldersgate: a large crop of chickweed> Barbican: Lime flowers> Charterhouse Square: Yarrow and plantain, dry sticks> Abandonded site behind Charterhouse square: Mint> Three Corners Adventure Playground, Northampton Road: Yarrow, nettles, chives, mallow, plantain> Percival Street: Elderflowers.

The Field Kitchen Cooked:

Lime Leaf wraps filled with Nettle, Yarrow, Chickweed, Chive & Plantain; Elderflower fritters with Juneberry sauce; Mugwort tea.

Friday: South(ish)

Bank of England window box: Rogue mustard leaf> Walbrook street: Gingko leaves> Red Lion Court: Sumac> Red Cross Road park: Lavender, rosemary, meadowsweet> Behind Suffolk street flats: Yarrow> Beautiful secret alleyway off Brockham street: Mallow, nettle, garlic mustard, lime leaves> Car park on Harper road: Fennel; Tabbard garden: Mugwort> Southward street: Fat Hen.

The Field Kitchen Cooked:

Nettle, yarrow and lime leaf burgers, seasoned with dried sea lettuce & sea purslane: Salad of lime leaves, fat hen, wild rocket, mustard leaf, garlic mustard, mallow, borage and marigold flowers; Gingko, rosemary and mint tea.

Saturday: East (ish)

Girdler’s Hall: Juneberries> Behind Spitalfields Market: Sumac> Churchyard, Commercial Street: Mallow, oregano, lemon balm, mulberries, passion flowers> Underwood road: chammomile and dry sticks> Spitalfields City Farm: red clover, a few logan berries, borage flowers> Bethnal Green park: self seeded fennel, dog rose, mint, elderflowers> Bethnal Green road planters: Fat Hen.

The Field Kitchen cooked:

Mallow leaf soup; Salad of Lime leaves, Fat Hen, fennel, red clover, borage flowers; Chammomile Tea; Elderflower fritters.

Fergus took us to several different locations, to sample plants that require different habitats. Near to a river, we picked the young shoots of Giant Hogweed, which contain a sap that causes skin irritation. However, carefully cut and steamed til tender, Hogweed shoots are delicious and tender like asparagus.

We tasted the stems of Burdock, Common Dock and Bristley Oxtongue – all stripped with a knife to reveal fresh crunchy stems with distinctive textures and flavours. In the woods, Fergus showed us a silver birch tree he’d tapped earlier in the year, and we tasted the Birch Sap syrup he’d produced – an incredible foraged sugar. (Although it takes a huge amount of reducing down, so each litre of syrup requires approx 80 litres of birch sap). We tasted a plant in the cruciferae family called Dittander. I nibbled a leaf and was shocked at overwhelming powerful flavour of mustard, as strong as a hot chilli, that made my eyes water.

For lunch, we ate  foraged feast: a salad containing 18 different ingredients, Quiche made with acorn flour pastry, sea kale and parasol mushrooms, and mashed potato with Dittander. Fergus had prepared two deserts: a milky pudding made with a seaweed similar to Irish Moss or Carraghean, to set it into a jelly-like consistency. And Sea Buckthorn juice sorbet – which had an amazingly zingy acidic flavour.

In the afternoon we visited a lakeside, and tasted the inside of the base of a reedmace stem.

The final part of the day was spent exploring the coast. We tasted many more plants – from the aniseed-like Alexanders, introduced by the Romans, to the cooked stems of Japanese Knotweed, that are remarkably similar to rhubarb. We had a dramatic dinner on the beach: Fergus cooked six different types of seaweed, throwing them one by one into a pan of hot oil over the fire, like a magician performing a ritual.