W
hen Living North talks to Linus Morton, he’s just back from a morning hunting for mushrooms in Kielder Forest and he’s full of enthusiasm.
Cep mushroom (also called Penny Bun which has a delicate flavour when cooked), elderflower (great for making wine and cordial), gorse flower (also good to make wine), rosehips (ideal for those with a sweet tooth) and blackberries.
‘Wild foods are there for anyone to try,’ he tells us. ‘It’s very easy to find a little corner of the Northumberland countryside you can spend the entire day foraging in, and you’ll have it all to yourself.’
Forget the ‘superfoods’ in supermarkets – Linus is convinced these are the real superfoods. Take nettles, for example. While their use is becoming more widespread, a lot of people still don’t know the leaves are loaded with vitamins and minerals. Linus and Louise also collect nettle seeds later in the year which they add to bread dough before baking. ‘Herbalists are using the seeds to treat allergies and arthritis, and to improve kidney function – there are amazing health benefits to take from these foods,’ he explains.
Three years ago Linus set up Northern Wilds with Louise Hepworth to offer wild food foraging courses as well as cookery lessons to teach people how to get the most from their findings. But his foraging began long before then. It was during weekends in the countryside friends started asking the pair to teach them how to pick wild mushrooms, which prompted Linus to leave his job working on projects for environmental charities, and Louise to put her photography business on the backburner, so they could concentrate on Northern Wilds. The pair now live in Greenhaugh, and when they aren’t showing people how to pick wild foods, they’re out gathering seasonal plants, mushrooms, berries, seeds and nuts to make the most of seasonal foods in the wild. The landscape of Northumberland is perfect for foragers to get out and about, and Linus usually takes them to Kielder Forest, Sidwood Forest in the Tarset Valley and Warksburn to look for wild food. ‘I like Warksburn best of all because it’s a particularly beautiful place to be, with a steepsided valley running and large mature trees,’ he says. ‘I’ve been out looking for plants like sweet cicely, which has an aniseed flavour, but the mushrooms we have up here are spectacular.
Feasting in the
‘Many mushrooms can take up to 20 years to establish so you won’t get them on disturbed land. Last year, they discovered two new species of Waxcaps we didn’t know were in the country up here, and that’s because we’ve got unimproved pasture land – grass that hasn’t been touched since the Iron Age.’
From nettles to bilberries and ceps to rosehips Living North discovers a veitable larder in the wilds of Northumberland
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Velvet Shank Mushroom
Wilderness
The summer is a great time for going out and seeing what’s in the hedgerows and the woodlands, and finding treats to take home for tea. For Linus and Louise, summer also means bilberry season. ‘We’re always wandering around with purple mouths and purple fingers, eating as we go.’ Bilberries taste like blueberries, only more intense and slightly sharper. Other foods they look for in the summer include the golden Chanterelle mushroom (which has a mild flavour with a slight peppery edge), the prized
When they’re out with groups, they act as a ‘safety net’ because as well as showing them what they can pick, they also need to keep an eye on the potentially dangerous foods they might pick accidentally. They would never go out without a guidebook through, no matter how experienced they are. ‘We’re forever learning more about all the foods out there. If we come across something we’ve never identified before, we’ll go through the guidebook and work out what it is,’ says Louise. ‘There are poisonous plants out there which deserve respect,’ Linus is quick to add. ‘With mushrooms, there aren’t any second chances, so unless you can positively identify something 100 percent, you don’t eat it. You have to stick to that rule. If you take a gamble, you gamble with your life.’ Louise and Linus enjoy nothing more than a good mushroom hunt, and their big target at the moment is Chicken of the Woods mushroom. ‘It’s a big bright orange fungus and it’s fantastic. It’s amazing when you find one because it’s so large, and it’ll feed you for a month,’ Louise raves. Last year, they introduced it to their vegetarian neighbours, who love it because it has a similar texture to chicken when cooked. ‘They don’t stop talking about it,’ she laughs. The wild foods in the Northumberland countryside are plentiful, and Louise says it’s now their goal to encourage more people to forage for food in the area. ‘Communities in Europe go out and harvest in their locality, and have festivals around harvesting, but we’ve lost the passion for that in this country,’ she laments. ‘For us, it’s a lifestyle and we love being able to share that with the people that come out foraging with us.’ www.northernwilds.co.uk
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Chicken of the Wood Mushroom Bilberries
Fantastic Foraging Tips from Linus and Louise ‘Forget the ‘superfoods’ in supermarkets – Linus is convinced these are the real superfoods. Take nettles, for example, while their use is becoming more widespread, a lot of people still don’t know the leaves are loaded with vitamins and minerals’
Don’t munch on a hunch – only eat foods you have 100 percent positively identified. Look at wild food recipes for ideas on what to forage and focus on the foods that you’ll enjoy.
Purple Clover Flower
Get a comprehensive guide book. For mushrooms, you need a book that has all mushrooms included and you might find that field guides often have missing species which can be misleading for identification. We recommend Mushrooms by Roger Phillips. For us, it’s the mushroom forager’s bible. Get to know the area you are foraging in. Mushrooms, for example, can accumulate heavy metals (which can be toxic to humans) from the soil so are best picked in wild places away from urban areas. Think about your containers. You might take a basket out with you, but it’s good to take a few paper bags as well. These can be filled with things that you haven’t identified so you don’t mix something potentially poisonous with your other foods. If you get the chance, go out on a foraging day with an expert because you’ll learn much more quickly when guided.
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