Ómós Digest #220: Foraging the Fiáin (Wild)
Exploring the wild flavours of place and season.
Foraging is one of those things that seems oddly timeless yet strangely trendy. In our world saturated with newness, nowness and immediacy, the act of foraging seems like a welcome step back into reconnecting with the land around us. As cooks, we are ultimately inspired by nature. It is our guiding force and our raison d’être. During a time as busy as it is for us all at the moment, it’s a welcome relief to be able to escape back into nature. A somewhat paradoxical sentence, we know. Yet foraging offers a chance to take a closer look at what we use and further consider the ingredients and produce that guides us.
The beauty of foraging lies in how it connects you back to wild food. It can feel like a wild goose chase at times, heading out in the pursuit of plants, leaves and produce that reveal themselves only when they are ready to be found. But that uncertainty is part of the joy and what we enjoy the most. There is a quiet anticipation in wondering what is out and in bloom at any particular moment in a season, a curiosity about what might be waiting and an expectation as to what you will find at that specific cross-section of the year. Be it unripe berries with their own specific tartness or the blooming elderflower to come, for us it’s all about capturing a certain essence and preserving it at a specific stage and flavour profile.
Wild food, as we understand it, is produce that exists beyond the reach of mass agriculture, monoculture and that relentless uniformity of commercially grown crops. It’s untamed, unhurried and exists entirely on its own terms. And really, isn’t that exactly as nature intended it to be? Scattered and hidden, almost rewarding those who go out of their way to find the bounty. It’s the locational and uniquely situational deviations that really inspire us to see beyond the limited view of agriculture that we so often have.
