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24/10/2014 0 Comments

Nature's Wild Pantry

Words: Mat Follas | Images: Jonathan Cherry
The Guardian / Enterprise open road

24 October 2014

The lanes, beaches and fishing ports of west Dorset provide rich pickings for our foraging friends. Click here to launch the story
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A cool, late September morning found me and a couple of friends, fellow chef Dean Edwards and Tam, cooing with delight in front of a blackberry hedge. An exciting day wandering the west Dorset countryside ... click here for more
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24/1/2011 0 Comments

Foraging Day at The Wild Garlic, Dorset

MiMi Aye
Meemalee.com

24 January 2011
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It's the morning after the night before and my husband, his brother, his brother's girlfriend and I ooze slowly down from the comfort of the lovely apartment and crumple into a little heap at the bottom of the stairs.

"Morning," chirps a jaunty-hatted Mat Follas, in a pinchably cheerful manner, "Don't tell me you've just got up?".
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"Grhmmmhrth", I say as we sit down at the long wooden table for some reviving coffee and cake. It's not that early to be fair - 9.30am.

The restaurant is full of other sprightly looking people - we've all gathered for a foraging course at the Wild Garlic led by expert Theo Langton and Mat himself.

"You're wearing city shoes" says Mat about my tough, plain black Clark's boots, "You're going to get mucky".
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I make another noise of disdain and nurse my cup of coffee. 

The brother-in-law and girlfriend are a good bit younger than the husband and me and, thoroughly perked up, they excitedly flick through their mini Food for Free foraging handbook they've brought along.
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Theo gives us a short talk about what to expect and some house rules ("No eating anything unless we say it's okay") and then we're off.
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Our first stop is rather unexpectedly a little lane just off the Square where the Wild Garlic is located.

Plants which look like weeds to me and which I see so often I don't "see" them any more turn out to be ground elder, jack-by-the-hedge and hogweed.
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Down another lane we go, and there's walnuts and blackberries, cobnuts and nettles.

Every discovery comes with a story from Theo and some culinary tips from Mat, and we make notes and take pictures and begin to think "Ray Mears has nothing on me".
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Now it's time to go further afield and we hop into a minibus driven by Mat himself and end up in a sun-dappled copse, where we traipse about merrily spotting different types of mushrooms.

Picking them the proper way (slice and not uproot so as not to kill), we offer them up to Theo for identification in hushed tones as if bearing tributes to a mighty potentate.

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We punch the air when we come up with an edible one and sigh when we come across a dud.

We find russolas and chanterelles and ceps and amethyst deceivers, different shapes, different colours, every one fascinating.
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It's all fantastic fun and we're genuinely sorry when we're told it's time for a mid-morning break and driven back to the Wild Garlic.

The sorrow doesn't last though as, back at the ranch, there are glorious brownies, fresh strawberries and more tea and coffee on offer.
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Refreshed, it's back in the bus for a journey to another beautiful part of the countryside - rolling hills, sheep and a fort on Eggardon Hill.

Hardy country is indeed stunning; I later find out that much of Hardy-inspired Tamara Drewe was filmed in the area.
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Here we come across wild apples and peppermint, sloes and damsons, sorrel and yarrow.

The fresh air and the feverish joy of finding nature's bounty is one of the best feelings I've had in a while.
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We sit for a while and we contemplate the beauty before us (well, Mat checks his iPhone and the rest of us contemplate).

Finally it's time to return to the fold where a delectable spread awaits the foragers and Mat and Theo who stay with us to chat and to answer more of our excitable questions.
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The foraging theme is continued through to the food - the soup is nettle; the ice cream is sharp sorrel; the jelly is made from damsons; there's sloe sauce with the confit duck.

And to add to our giddy joy, at the end of the meal Mat comes out with gift bags for us all containing a Wild Garlic mug and a small packet of ramson seeds ie wild garlic ...
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Fabulous day, fabulous course and yes, you do get muddy, but it's all very gentle. Best of all is the nifty little price - £95 all in.

The wonderful thing is that it's obviously seasonal - I cannot wait to go back to Dorset in the Spring and in the Summer to be shown what else Nature has in store for us.
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This post is dedicated to Tash Samways, who was one of the reasons I loved The Wild Garlic.
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18/9/2010 0 Comments

A walk on the wild side

The Guardian
18 September 2010

Foraging for food in the woodland and beaches of Dorset with a real-life TV Masterchef
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Theo Langton imparts local knowledge to the group.
Photograph: Neil Turner for The Guardian

I'm not an outdoor girl. As far as foraging for food goes, I'm less the wilds of Dorset, more the aisles of Waitrose. So how do I find myself eating plants picked from a wet and windy beach on the south coast? I'd like to say, as a trainee chef, it's because I'm passionate about discovering new ingredients – but that would be a lie. No, I'm here because I'm addicted to TV cookery programmes, so when the opportunity to meet a real-life Masterchef arises, I jump at it. Even though it does involve being outside. In the rain.

I have signed up to take part in a foraging day run by 2009 Masterchef winner Mat Follas. For me, Mat was one of the programme's most memorable contestants, a New Zealand-born IT manager with a passion for wild and foraged ingredients. He now runs a successful restaurant, The Wild Garlic, in Beaminster, Dorset, and this summer launched a series of foraging days, giving diners the chance to join him for a morning's exploration of the local environs, followed by lunch at the restaurant.The day starts at 9.30am, when the group meet Mat and guide Theo, a fascinating local character whose family are all ardent foragers and also live entirely without electricity. If anyone knows about living off the land, you trust he does. Despite the rain, everyone is eager to get going.

No sooner than we've set off, Theo stops us. He points to some leaves sprouting from a grate in the road. I'm no gardener but my first guess would be weeds. Apparently not. It's hairy bittercress, an edible leaf related to mustard, which works well in salads.
Clocking the worried faces, Theo stresses he's notadvocating truffling in the gutters, but merely pointing out that these ingredients are on our doorstep.

After examining some ground elder in an overgrown garden (again, good in salads) we continue into the countryside. Forestry work prevents us from exploring the best mushroom-picking areas, so we focus on the hedgerows. The double act between Mat and Theo works well, with Theo explaining the traditional uses of what we spot and Mat focusing on how he uses the ingredients in the kitchen. We discuss an endless trail of plants – I doubt I'd have the confidence to identify them all again but many stick in my mind: the silver birch tree that yields sugar, the jack-by-the-hedge seeds that taste of wasabi and the hogweed seeds that burst with cardamom flavour, which Mat uses in his chocolate brownies.

Briefly we take shelter in a copse, apparently home to an abundance of wild garlic in early spring. Wild garlic typifies what Mat loves about foraging – an ingredient that can be used in numerous ways at every stage of its life cycle: the flower petals in salads, the older leaves wrapped round meat, the bulbs roasted. Here, he also explains the ethics of foraging, encouraging us to be mindful of where we are, who owns the land and the importance of not stripping an environment. Taking just 10% of a plant is almost too much, he warns: "If it's been taken unethically then the food just won't taste good."

After a tea-and-brownie stop back at the restaurant, we head out again by van to explore the shore. The pebble beach is a forager's paradise, littered with patches of bluey-green sea kale and bushes of rock samphire. As the wind picks up, some of us (me included) retreat to the van while others continue with Theo along the coast. We pick them up at the end of their trail and head back for lunch.

On the menu today: watercress soup with red cress and quail's egg served with foraged leaves; locally sourced crayfish salad with crayfish consomme; and tangy sorrel ice-cream with apple and lavender jelly, wild raspberries and borage flowers. These days we're so used to a standard roll call of flavours when we eat out, it's a genuine surprise and pleasure to taste something you have never tried before. My day with the Masterchef has more than lived up to expectations. May many more people take a foraged leaf out of Mat's book.
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7/7/2010 0 Comments

Wild Food Foraging Course with Mat Follas

Candida Drew-Prior
7 July 2010
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6/7/2009 0 Comments

Whortleberries

Mat Follas
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We have a new member of the team ... Jo (who is a Phd in woodland ecology) looked us up and showed up today with a big tray of whortleberries ... what yummy fruit. They are like blueberries but with flavour and more colour !

Looking forward to what else she shows up with ... lots of wild mushrooms for the autumn and should have some interesting plants over the next couple of months for the restaurant !

Made Berry mess using them and used as a coulis with Beth's brownies today in the restaurant ... will try with a burnt cream or mousse tomorrow ...

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12/3/2009 0 Comments

When we went down to the woods!

Mat Follas

On Sunday we took the kids and went down to a friends woodland to see what is growing ... great fun but probably a little too early still for most foraged food due to the late spring.

We also had John Wright with us ... better known locally as 'Mushroom John' for his River Cottage mushroom book and his TV work with HFW. John is just finishing a seashore foraging book due out May (I think) which will be a great reference. We had long discussions over seaweeds and umame flavours in the pub afterwards !

He has given us some great pointers on alternate local sourced seaweeds that I'll be trying as an alternate to the Japanese dried seaweeds I love to cook with ... watch this space !

John was tapping some birch trees for sap to try and make a reduction syrup ... to be honest the sap tasted like water but it was fun trying and hopefully, once reduced, the end product will be good.
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We did find some wood sorrel which we were all very excited about, it will be a key ingredient when the restaurant gets started and watchers of MasterChef will have seen me use it at Noma making Chef's signature dish. It has a great woody citrus flavour that goes well with meat dishes, its still early for the wood sorrel so we only picked a few samples but looking forward to going back and gathering in decent quantities.
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30/8/2008 0 Comments

A walk on the beach

Amanda Follas
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