Foraging Walk in Late Winter.

Hey welcome to UK Wildcrafts, we've finally got some nice weather after pretty much two months of just non-stop rain, so I'm taking a walk from Bristol Harbourside up towards Avonmouth along the River Avon, let's see what we can find. So I want to pick some nice fresh greens for some stir fries and these alexanders can still be picked this time of year, get these nice bright green shoots, but this is actually a really good example of why you've got to be extra careful with the carrot family because you've got good edible alexanders here and then right next to it one of the most deadly poisonous plants in the world, hemlock water dropwort, and they do look quite similar. So here's two growing literally right next to each other, this is alexanders on the left, you can see the base of the plant there growing right next to the base of this hemlock water dropwort, and I know I've said it before in quite a few other videos but it's really worth repeating, if you're a beginner you should stay away from the carrot family, if you don't know what you're doing it's really dangerous. So this is the alexanders on the left, you can see the leaves are a little bit broader than the hemlock water dropwort on the right, but they are quite similar, and if you were to mix these up even quite a small amount of this could be fatal. This sea beet is looking nice and fresh, although sea beet is mostly a coastal plant, the river Avon is tidal all the way up to Bristol, so coastal plants can have their seeds carried upriver, so you can find plants like sea quite far up this river here. It's so nice to be able to get out and do a bit of foraging in the sunshine, it feels like spring's nearly here now. A nice flush of turkey tails here, just taking a wander up into lee woods, some velvet shank mushrooms here, these are really good edible winter mushroom. I'm not actually going to take these because it's not been a very good year for winter mushrooms because it's not really been that cold. I'm just going to leave these be, but they are lovely mushroom to look at. These hazel catkins are still fine to pick, they're best when they're closed up like this rather than open. By the time that the flowers have opened up like this they would have dropped most of their pollen, so they won't have as much protein in them anymore, so they're best when they're like this. When it comes to alexanders, you want to be going for this fresher growth that's like a brighter green colour. It's got quite an unusual almost perfumey flavour which isn't for everyone, but I love alexanders. Something to always check for with alexanders is on the margins of the leaves, on the very tips of each teeth there's a little white dot called a hydrophode, see if my camera can pick it up. So these little white pinpricks right at the very tips of the leaves, they're a really good identification feature for alexanders because hemlock water dropwort doesn't have these white pinpricks. The main stems of alexanders are good as well as long as they're still nice and flexible like this. There's loads of black mustard around this year which is good because I love these young leaves, they're really hot and spicy. I've got such a strong kick to them, it's like eating a spoonful of wasabi. That's the first common hogweed shoot that I've seen this year. It's that time of year that all foragers look forward to when the wild garlic starts to come up. I'll just give these greens a quick rinse. This is a quick and easy stir fry and I'll eat something similar to this at least once a week with foraged greens. First of all I'll make a sauce with soy sauce, some mirin, some gochujang and then some fresh ginger and half a chilli and then give it all a stir. If you want to add a bit of extra sweetness then add some ketchup or if you've got any hawthorn ketchup then that adds a really nice flavour as well. Cut up some chicken thighs and then marinate the chicken in half of the sauce for a few hours. Heat a small amount of oil in a pan or wok and cook the chicken for around six to eight minutes on a high heat and then you can add in the rest of the sauce. Roughly chop up your greens. I add the sea beet and alexanders first including some of these broccoli like alexander flower buds. The wild garlic and black mustard I'll add right at the end because they're better raw. Add the noodles and stir them in and then right at the end you can add in your chopped wild garlic and black mustard. Take it off the heat and it's ready to serve. I'll use the rest of the wild garlic that I picked for making wild garlic chicken kievs and I'll make a separate video for that soon. Thanks for watching.