Miles Irving: The Forager Handbook
It is only relatively recently that we have forgotten the important additional role that our woods, fields and hedgerows (as well as river banks and sea shores) played in diet and health. Arguably, after the industrial revolution, foods and medicines collected from these sources became the preserve of the rural poor, but that doesn’t mean that they didn’t have great nutritional value and flavour.
There is an increasing interest in wild harvested foods, not just in the usual plants and mushrooms but more unusual species including naturalised garden escapees like Himalayan balsam and oft overlooked representatives of our native flora such as shepherds purse and hedge garlic (illustrated left). Leading chefs and delicatessens, particularly in London, are requesting small volumes of an increasing range of foraged foods – often they’re guided in these choices by a new breed of responsible, professional forager.
Miles Irving is one such forager, part of a growing number supplying shops, restaurants and their own tables with seasonal wild food. Miles is based in Kent and runs a supply company called Forager, he sells to local restaurants and also directly into London. This year he published his first book, The Forager Handbook
Covering a wide range of UK plants (including garden escapes) and with good recipes – often provided by the chefs Irving supplies, the book also includes a useful introduction covering the basics of foraging; including toxicity and sustainability. Unlike Mabey or Phillips’ books The Forager Handbook doesn’t cover mushrooms, but these probably require a separate guide anyway.
In testing the book in the shop I went straight to cherry plums (illustrated right), a tasty and worthwhile wild fruit inexplicably omitted from Wild Food and dismissed by Mabey. Irving both includes and eulogizes these multi-coloured stone fruits.
At Provenance we offer an assessment service to landowners and mangers, initially walking over the land and making general observations then following up with more detailed seasonal visits (particularly important when assessing the potential for mushroom collection). If we think that there are species that can be sustainably harvested and are sufficiently in demand we will make recommendations for collection. This could involve us providing support in harvesting and marketing foraged foods or alternatively we can handle the harvest and sales ourselves, returning a proportion of sales to the landowner.