Finding flavour by the roadside

While London's well-to-do soaked up the sun in gardens and gastropubs this weekend, I was gnawing on plums in a Greenwich car park.

But finding food in the bushes isn't as weird as you'd expect.

Blackheath resident Tom Parkinson, 28, has been foraging in London for nearly four years. On weekends, his desk gathers dust while he explores the outdoors, leading guided walks and infusing a range of recipes with wild ingredients.

The theory is that, while you can't do your weekly shop in a park, you can find interesting flavours almost everywhere. But unless Greenwich boasted a pizza tree, I was pretty certain I'd need some expert advice.

Walking towards Maze Hill station from Greenwich town centre, the man dubbed "The London Forager" explained more about his calling.

He said: "It wasn't started as a credit crunch solution. We're really into food. You're less likely to have industrial pesticides on plants in London than you are in the country.
"Dogs' piss is the enemy though, so you have to wash everything."

He stopped and pointed out a tree with green blobs hanging from it.

He said: "These are white mulberries. They're fantastic.

"You can eat them raw or make jam out of them. They taste like figs."

Of course, it's all very well enjoying these taste sensations until someone with boxing training spots you in their flower bed. So where do foragers draw the line?

He said: "If it falls on the ground you can pick it up, as long as you're not violating rules of trespass. You don't want to go into someone's garden and start uprooting crops.

"In Greenwich Park you're not allowed to pick any plants at all as it's a royal park. But when it comes to the chestnuts from the trees in the park, they seem perfectly happy for you to pick those up if you want.

"You're not going to eliminate supermarkets by doing this. Your motivation should be to try out interesting foods."

A busy city hardly treats its plant life with kid gloves, and we arrived at a car park near the Trafalgar Estate to find a large chunk of a plum tree on the tarmac.

Tom said: "I've been picking plums from this spot for a year or so now. But they've recently changed the car park to put coach spaces here, and it seems they've cut half the tree down.

"We make wine, chutney, jam and liqueurs out of plums mostly. Liqueurs are the main thing we do because a little fruit goes a long way in terms of flavour.

"The joy of foraging is finding things you couldn't get in a supermarket.

"Wild garlic, for example, comes in during March and April. It can be eaten raw as a salad leaf and it's got a very intense flavour.

"Wild fennel is different to what you get in supermarkets and there's a really strong aniseed flavour. It will really liven up a dish.

"There are a lot of elderflower trees around London, in Greenwich particularly, and there are many cherry, plum, crab apple and apple trees about.

"One of the dangers of a city is that there are a lot of ornamental plants as well. There are a lot of things which have berries on them that look quite inviting, but that can make you quite ill.

"The best thing to do is to get a field guide. The Royal Botanical Society also has an identification guide on its website."

At Maze Hill station we came upon a hawthorn bush, which can be mined for wines and jellies.

We also met Roland Phillips, who has foraged with Tom since the pair met at university in Canterbury.

Roland, 28, said: "Living in the city you fall out of touch with the seasons.

"You can buy everything all year round in Tesco, but with foraging you have to follow the seasons to find things at their best."

During the walk, Tom frequently sang the praises of wild fennel, a plant we discovered as we blundered into the long grass beyond Greenwich Park.

Sadly, while a few sprigs remained, persons unknown had given the plant a military crew-cut. Roland said: "The gastropubs with foraging dishes on their menus might have had something to do with it.

"There's enough fennel in the city to support whimsy, but not harvesting."

As we wandered down towards Blackheath, Tom and Roland discussed off-beat recipes, occasionally stopping to remove items such as elderflowers, cherries and greengages from nearby trees.

Many of the pair's recipes are located at londonforager.com, including an old Czech recipe for walnut liqueur, which involves grinding down walnuts, zesting with orange and lemon and steeping them in vodka for 40 days and 40 nights.

Roland said: "One finds oneself trying to adapt foragables into more traditional recipes, which led us to nettle lasagne and nettle quiche. Most people assume it's second best or a gag, but it's delicious.

"Of course, we've all had our disasters. I tried chestnut soup and it was horrible. Tom had a go at elderberry crumble. It's trial and error with the cooking, really."

Tom Parkinson gave The Wharf tips on what to do with some of the plants that are growing on London streets...

Elderflowers: "For elderflower champagne, you ideally need three large elderflower heads to make five litres, and the flavour is quite intense. The yeast is actually on the flower, so if you wash them too much, you won't be as successful."