beach forage

For the last three days Robin Harford has led groups on a morning forage – this one takes place on Peters Splosh, one of the beaches below the campsite..

Carragheen, Chondus crispus

Carrageen, from the Irish carraigin or ʻLittle Rockʼ, was traditionally used as a milk
thickener for a popular bedtime drink, and was claimed to be good for insomnia. It
was also used to make blancmange and firm up fish pates.

It is rich in trace elements and vitamins along with protein, fat and
carbohydrate, it is almost a complete food.

Sea Lettuce, Ulva lactuca

Sea lettuce is full of iron, vitamin A, B and C, protein, plus trace
elements.

tasting raw limpets –

last words circle at the  fireside

honey marmalade

Vivians’ Honey Marmalade from Ralphs shop in the village is a real treat but very expensive so thought I’d have a go at making some by replacing the sugar in a recipe by Gloria Nicol. The trick is the elusive ‘setting point’ and when it seemed that it just wasn’t going to work I reluctantly added sugar thinking that’s what must be needed. It turned out to be well set and yummy (even though I wasn’t sure it would set at all when I poured it into jars swearing I’d never make marmalade again!).

Ingredients:

• 2kg Seville Oranges
• 1 Lemon
• 1.5kg honey
• 1kg mixed sugars – white granulated, light brown granulated, dark brown

Method:

1. Preheat oven to 180 C/ gas mark 4
2. put whole fruits in covered pan, add 2.5 litres water & bring to boil on hob
3. place in oven – poach fruits for 2.5 – 3 hrs
4. take fruit out & when cool enough to handle cut in half & scoop out fruit, pulp & seeds into muslin over a bowl to catch drips leaving the peel to be shredded later.
5. measure the liquid & add in water to make up to 2 litres
6. tie muslin bag of pulp etc and place in pan – add enough poaching liquid to cover bag, bring to boil and simmer for 15 mins
7. leave till cool then squeeze out as much liquid as poss then discard bag & pulp.
8. chop rind into thin strips, add poaching liquid, honey and sugar over a low heat until dissolved then boil rapidly for 15mins & test for setting point
9. leave to stand for 15mins, stir to distribute peel then pour into hot jars.
10. enjoy!

Debs mentioned that Margaret Davies reckons you need equal sugar to fruit (Margaret’s a star cook and she also does the church fairtrade / traidcraft stall..she’s in a page I’m currently working on for the guidebook to introduce some of the wonderful food activities that the church and other local groups get up to..

anyway, thought I’d try again following the same recipe process but without the extra water added at stage 5 – 1kg of oranges, 1 lemon and 900g honey (2 jars of honey). This produced 2.5 jars of very well set and delicious honey marmalade & am now thinking I may have been able to get another jar or two if I’d kept the water in and been extremely patient towards reaching the elusive ‘setting point”!!

anyway..all good in the end and so satisfying to have stock to share and give to people

‘our marm’

Debs just sent this pic of the marmalade she made yesterday from the Seville oranges we got at Juliettes stall …

“My parents started this stall over 40 years ago,” says Juliette Burley, her bright blue eyes assessing me like an inquisitive bird. “I first came here when I was 13 years old, with a stall and a trailer – and now I’m 45!”

The stall in question – which was once a pigeon carrier – is along the A39 Truro to Falmouth road, in a layby near Perranarworthal. Anyone who travels along this road will know it – the tubs of freshly picked flowers outside, racks of fresh vegetables and fruit, and inside is a cornucopia of delights ranging from free range eggs and freshly picked mushrooms, to home made cakes and Vicky’s home made bread. Everyone is greeted by Juliette – or one of her two daughters – with a cheery “hello, bird,” a twinkly smile, and there’s always time for a chat.

“In an average week I must have produce from 10-15 local farmers,” says Juliette. “It’s all local sourced from the other wholesalers. Then there’s Vicky’s bread from Helston, Gwavas supply the milk, butter and cream; cheese is from the Lynher Dairies in Stithians and the flowers are from Cox’s in St Keverne.” Sue Kittow

chutney – all dressed up for xmas

Geopoetic Lunch – some chutney

Alyson Hallett (friend and Caravanserai ‘writer-in-residence’  August 2009) & Professor Catherine Leyshon-Brace (my PhD supervisor) were succesful in securing a Leverhulme award for Alyson to be poet-in residence within the Geography dept at Univ Exeter Tremough campus.

Cannot Unsun – a poem written for Kate

Alyson’s post began in September and today she is holding her first ‘Geopoetic Lunch’ with students and staff from the Geography and English-with-creative-writing departments, “an opportunity to talk about the exciting territories of poetry and geography and the ways in which they connect and diverge”.

The main aim of the lunch is to create a friendly environment where our concerns and passions about creativity and landscape can be explored in an informal, inspiring and nourishing way.

Todays lunch showcases work by the CLIF project (CLIF ran a pilot research stall at a Caravnaserai event in 2009 and also discussed various ideas with Mac about creative writing in response to people experiencing climate change locally).

Unfortunately we couldn’t be there today to catch up with the developments of the CLIF project but we’ve donated some chutney for the table, a nourishing product of immersive landscape practice – gardening

The garden is central to Caravanserai – it’s where we began working with Pete & Debs at Treloan and continues to be a collective learning process and source of surprise and nourishment.

We began cultivating the plot in Middle Close (the project field) in 2008, building pens to house the pigs that dug the ground for us. During the same period we sourced a suitable caravan for a residency space (the project van).

Since then Caravanserai has hosted artists, writers, musicians, storytellers, foragers, geographers, academics and students through various residencies, work placements, field visits and project events.

The garden sustains this hospitality, its produce graces the tables of resident guests and visitors, providing food and flowers for the honesty stall and events such as our annual local food banquet ‘feast'(2009 & 2010) and fireside gatherings.

Currently we’re preparing the ground for new growth..

the cupboard’s full

three varieties – red tomato (recipe here), green tomato and marrow

plus ‘VIP chutney’ in Kilner jars (ran out of recycled jars) – green tomato made with honey instead of sugar (adapted from a Moosewood Cookbook recipe) as follows..

Ingredients:

2lbs green tomatoes
2 tbs fresh chopped ginger
2 cloves minced garlic
3 tsp mixed spices – ground coriander, cumin, turmeric, cardamon
1 tbsp salt
1 tsp wholegrain miso mustard
1 cup honey
1 cup cider vinegar

Method

• Chop tomatoes
• combine everything
• bring to the boil
• simmer for an hour or so stirring now and then, until juice thickens
• cool before ladling into hot jars

Red Tomato Chutney

wow! we’ve got overloads of tomatoes even though we’ve been eating them fresh, putting excess on the honesty stall and using them in our food events as well as the local harvest dinner & Pete’s tomato sauce.

This recipe for red tomato chutney is from here (but roughly trebled in volume) making 14 average sized jars (haven’t tried it yet as am letting it sit for a month).

Ingredients

9tbsp sesame oil
30 oz coarsely chopped onion
3 cloves garlic, chopped
9oz grated ginger
5 red chillies deseeded and cut into strips
6 pound firm red tomatoes, peeled and de-seeded
12oz soft brown sugar
24 floz vinegar (16 floz red wine vinegar  + 8 floz cider vinagar)
3 tsp mixed spices – ground cardamon, turmeric, nutmeg, paprika
3oz chopped fresh mint

Method

• Fry the onion, garlic, ginger and chillies until the onion starts to colour.
• add the tomatoes and cook for fifteen minutes. (I have a glut of cherry tomatoes, and life’s too short to peel an de-seed them..so I just chop them.)
• Add the sugar and vinegar and bring to the boil.
• Boil until thickened, for about thirty minutes. Remove from the heat
• stir in spices and mint.
• Ladle into hot jars. It is ready to eat in one month and will keep for a year.

sloe gin

nothin’ like a bit of foraging to while away the blues.. thought I’d give this a go (even tho I’m not too crazy about gin)

SLOE GIN RECIPE from The Cottage Smallholder

Ingredients:

1lb/454gm of washed sloes

4 ozs/112gm of white granulated sugar

75cl bottle of medium quality gin

Sterilised 1 litre (at least) Le Parfait jar or wide necked bottle

Method:

• Wash sloes well and discard any bruised or rotten fruit. Prick fruit several times with a fork and place sloes in either a large Kilner/Le Parfait jar or a wide necked 1 litre bottle. I put several sloes in my palm to prick them rather than picking them up one by one.
• Using a funnel, add the sugar and top up with gin to the rim. Always open sugar bags over the sink as sugar tends to get caught in the folds at the top of the bag.
• Add the almond essence.
• Shake every day until the sugar is dissolved and then store in a cool, dark place until you can resist it no longer (leave for at least three months, we usually let it mature for a year).
• Some people strain the grog (through muslin/jelly bag) after 3 months and bottle it, leaving it mature for six months. We strain and bottle after a year. Don’t leave the straining process any longer than a year; leaving the fruit in too long can spoil the liqueur.

Tips and tricks:

• Make more than you need the first year, so you can compare different vintages. This liqueur does improve over time.
• Some people drain the grog through muslin after a couple of months, to clarify the liqueur and bottle. We don’t bother as one old soak tipped that, once the gin is drunk, you can pour medium sherry on the fruit and start all over again! The latter is devilish and drinkable within three months. We have a recipe for this in our wine and gin section.
• Keep your fruit gin away from the light as this will maintain the colour. Unless it is in a dark green or brown bottle. Wrapping it in brown parcel paper will keep out the light

The Sutherland’s Campers Broth

Ingredients:

3 leeks – Ralphs
4 medium sized potatoes – Roger’s garden
4 carrots – Ralphs
half bag of lentils – Ralphs
6 tomatoes – Gerrans Tea Rooms
tin of tomatoes – Ralphs
herbs – Treloan honesty stall
3 cloves of garlic – Ralphs
red onion – Ralphs
stock & oil – from home

Method:

• chop up veg and garlic
• sweat in oil (or butter)
• add tomatoes, herbs and stock
• cover and simmer for 20mins
• blend or part mash as desired

Robin’s Wild Food Risotto

Ingredients: Serves: 2 people
2 handfuls of nettle tops – Treloan campsite
6 inch strip of kelp sliced into matchsticks – Breakneck beach
1 handful of young growth curly dock leaves  – Treloan campsite
1 handful of hedge bedstraw tips  – Treloan campsite
2 handfuls of fat hen leaves – Treloan campsite
1 onion thinly sliced  – Ralphʼs deli
2 cloves of garlic sliced – Ralphʼs deli
4 handfuls of risotto rice  – Co-op St. Mawes,  Ralphʼs was out of stock
Good splash of white wine  – Ralphʼs deli
1 litre of vegetable stock – Blagged off Annie
Oil – Ralphʼs deli

Method:

• Fry sliced onion and garlic in oil until soft.
• Add risotto rice and stir until coated in oil.
• Next add white wine and allow the alcohol to steam off.
• Then add nettles, kelp, curly dock, fat hen and stir into rice until thoroughly mixed and beginning to wilt. Yes you add these at the beginning!
• Now add some stock and stir over a low heat until absorbed by the rice, then keep adding stock until the rice becomes ʻAl denteʼ. You do not have to keep your face in the saucepan, just keep an eye on it so it doesnʼt start to stick/burn, then add more stock.

Share this fine food with fine fellows and fellow-rettes. Wild Food, Wild Hearts.

Robin Harford