HUNTER-GATHERING: wild & fresh food

The Rabbit Canape: De-constructed Rabbit Caesar Salad.

One of the good things about living in France is that you can buy Rabbit in the supermarket, the bad thing is, they ain’t cheap. Back in the UK, I never have to fork out for Rabbits, simply take out the gun and bring back a brace o’coneys. In France I don’t have a gun, let alone land to shoot on and even if I did, there are no bunnies running around the sandy fields of Landes, because trigger-happy hungry Frenchies have already shot them all.

Spenny Rabbit: 6 Euros for 4 haunches!

Rather than potting (see potted rabbit post here), pan-frying and stewing Rabbits, a regular occurrence at Hunter Gather Cook HQ, dainty little canapés are rarely served, something that is due to change this year. Secret Productions have asked the HGC team to come to Wilderness Festival in the Cotswolds to have a woodland lounge serving wild canapés and wild cocktails after teaching deer butchery sessions and conducting foraging walks. I can guarantee that this little beauty will certainly make the cut!

Bitesize Bunny: I love it when they just jump into the basket...

Last September, the Mrs and I tied the knot in deepest darkest Sussex. Naturally, the whole event was a largely bucolic affair in the corner of a field with tents, tipis, hog roasts, hay bales and some fancy cocktails.  Wild food and foraged fare was the main theme on the menu, but as I was in the process of getting hitched and my instructors were guests- who do you get to do the catering and do it well?

Dapper: One of the rare occasions I wear a suit.

Fortunately, we were recommended an excellent Sussex based caterer: Sarah Litchfield of Elm Green, who not only took up the challenge of a wild food menu for the day but delivered an excellent feast. Our list of canapés that were drawn up included the deconstructed Rabbit Caesar salad and it was a firm favourite with many of the guests, some who had never tried Rabbit before…

Wedding Menu hand drawn by Mrs W.

Ingredients:

For the Rabbit:

• Haunches from 2 rabbits, pre-cooked in a court bouillon (see here)
• 1 egg.
• 60g plain white flour (seasoned)
• 100g bread crumbs.
• Salt & Pepper

 For the Caesar Salad Dressing:

• 5 TBSP of Mayonnaise
• 1TBSP of cider vinegar
• Small handful Grated Parmesan
• 1 garlic clove
• 2 anchovies (finely chopped)
• Salt & Pepper
• Water for thinning the dressing.
• 2 heads of Little Gem lettuce.

First deal with the rabbit. They will need to be cooked in a court bouillon for 1 ½ hours so the meat will flake off the bone, 2 hours is too long, you want the meat to still have a fair amount of hold so they can be made into goujons.

Now make the dressing. This certainly isn’t the purest of dressing, we use shop bought mayo as we don’t have anywhere to plug the kitchen aid in at our off-grid kitchen in the woods. Now for a good little tip: If you can, try to keep a bulb of garlic in the freezer to take out with you in the field, below 0˚C garlic cells denature and become a lot less fierce. Finely chop the garlic and anchovies and mix up in a bowl with the rest of the dressing ingredients, at this point taste, season and add a little water to thin the dressing down.

Once you have all your rabbit pieces, lay out three plates: one with seasoned flour, one with a whisked egg and one with breadcrumbs. Dip and roll your rabbit pieces in each in the above order and ensure a thorough coating all over and then place to one side.

Heat up a frying pan with a good glug of cooking oil in it, dip in one end of the rabbit goujons to see if it starts to fry, if so, you are ready to cook- place in all the goujons and fry until lightly golden, flip them over and repeat. Remove and place on a paper towel.

Take a couple of heads of little gem lettuce and break off all the leaves and wash well. You are now ready to plate up on the platter of your choice. The nice thing about this canapé is the DIY-ness of it all, a bit like when you get one of those hot stones in a restaurant and pay an arm and a leg to cook your own meal. Grab a rabbit goujon, dip in the dressing and then place it in a little gem leaf. Eat. Then repeat...and repeat again.

So what does a Hunter-Gatherer's Wedding look like? Mostly homemade...

Dock: Stuffed.

If the first wild plant most of us learn as children is the stinging nettle, then the second one would have to be dock, an equally common plant always found in abundance. It seems unclear whether the dock really does cure a sting…is it the placebo effect? Is it that dock sap contains alkaline that will counteract against the formic acid?  Is it the saliva mixed with the dock after chewing and then applied to the stung area that helps? They grow together, so they must go together?

Dock is part of the dock family and another rumex, Oxalic acid is largely abundant- no sign of alkaloids at all. Apparently they do contain antihistamine, which counteracts the natural histamines found in the nettle…but hey, I’m not a botanist. I’m like…a cook, man. (but I will say plantain beats a dock on a sting hands down). One thing I am sure many of you will agree with me on if you have ever had the pleasure of being caught short in the great outdoors sans loo paper, is that it makes a pretty good substitute. The veins on the underside of the leaves are very good at…actually, I won’t elaborate.

Good Mates: Dock and nettles like to hang out in the same places.

So we all know what dock looks like, but more importantly: can it be eaten?

In short, yes, it can. It does come with a list of warnings that the usual list of plants containing oxalic acid do: do not eat if you have poor kidney function or are in ill health.  The toxic component is calcium oxalate (also found in taro, kiwi fruit , tea and rhubarb), these needle shaped crystals which can cause irritation to the skin, mouth throat and lead to stomach upset.

Still want to eat dock?

The Foraging Diary: invaluable to any hunter-gatherer.

The needle shaped crystals of calcium oxalate is also known as Rhaphides, they can’t normally be destroyed by boiling, but heating them does ‘fix’ the Raphides into a dried starchy matrix, making them less mobile and thus: safer to eat. Phew! As I said, not a botanist, but worth knowing you’re shit if you’re going to put it in your mouth (that came out wrong).

So if that hasn’t scared you off, the key to eating dock is to BOIL IT. If you are in need of further convincing, Andy Hamilton did a recipe for the BBC Food website here.

Although Dock can be used as a spinach substitute, the firm leathery leaves are still robust enough to be used for parceling your food of choice even after boiling.Think of them as vine leaves that grow everywhere. To render them perfectly edible, they need to be boiled twice. Heat two pans of water and add a pinch of salt. Once on a rolling boil, stick your dock leaves in the first pan and boil for 2 minutes. Remove them from the first pan and stick them in to the second pan for a further 2 minutes. Take out the leaves and dry them off on some paper towels. You are now ready to roll…

Filling is completely up to you: Rice, couscous, quinoa, rabbit, venison, horse, mince (preferably horse-free) nettle pesto cakes, the list is endless. I like to do mine with a simple Moroccan spiced couscous: pan fry some diced onion, chilli and garlic, finely chop some tomatoes, parsley and mint, make your couscous and chuck the whole lot together with some sunflower seeds, olive oil, salt, a dash of cumin and a good squeeze of lemon juice.

Origami using vegetation has never been a strong point of mine. After spending weeks on a desert island in the South pacific weaving an entire roof out of palm, my enthusiasm for such activities wore thin. But there is a knack to it with dock leaves and here’s how: 

Lay out your Dock leaves like this- underside facing down.

Then roll up like this and fix with a matchstick if necessary.

So there you have it, dock leaves can be used for more than just placating nettle stings or wiping your backside with. Not many plants have such a plethora of uses attached to their CV.

On another note, the first few Hunter Gather Cook Courses are down in the calendar with many more to follow when our new website goes online at the end of the month:

Spring Fungal Foray & Feast: Saturday 27^th April.

Spring Seasonal Day Course: Saturday 4^th May.

Please email enquiries@huntergathercook.com for more information.

In the meantime, life is busy. The wife and I are moving back to the UK leaving the sun, sea and surf of SW France behind (booo!) and relocating back to good ole’ Sussex. I am then off to Ethiopia with World Vision in March to hang out with some hunter-gatherers and write about it, what an adventure!

Get docking people!

Stag Do’s: Hunter Gather Cook Stylee.

Here at HGC, we like to cater for everyone and a group of lads looking to experience something unique as a send off for their condemned friend is no exception: The Hunter Gather Stag was born.

Trying to blend in: stag wears stag.

No longer are the men of today content with the “Prague, Tits & Beer” of the past, stag do’s are becoming more sophisticated (sort of…), paintball and go-karting don’t quite cut the mustard like they used to. Men want to be men and do manly stuff, collectively they want to unleash their inner caveman once unchained from the desk: they want to eat meat off the bone, they want to make fire, they want to sup a few ales and roar with laughter at each others expense. So where better to go than a Hunter-Gatherer School to let it all out?

 

In reality it seems that man has changed little over the last 10,000 years when it comes to the basics, some things just remain the same…

Being based only an hour from London and 20 minutes from Brighton, HGC HQ is ideally placed for those looking to experience a bit of outdoor adventure during the day and then head off to the bright lights of the city for a bit a bit of nocturnal revelry. No Stag group is the same, some have headed to Brighton, some to Eastbourne and quite a few to Lewes for some serious Ale tasting in the shadow of Lewes Cathedral (also known as the Harveys Brewery).

Racking up the Venison Kebabs.

 So what can you expect from a HGC Stag do?

Without further ado and not wanting to give the game away (a little smoke & mirrors never hurts…) here we go:

Bromance: How many stags can you fit into a 2 man shelter...

HUNTER:GATHER:STAG.

Come and join us in the woods to celebrate your staggy with a day of time-honoured manliness:

Deer butchery and Cook off

Fish trapping

Fire Starting

Shelter building

Wild food wander

Bush tucker trial

Cider tasting

HGC Challenge

Based on the South Downs near Brighton, expect a day of great banter and hands on outdoor action. The stag will receive a special gift from the HGC team as a ‘stagmento’ from his time in the woods.

Arriving At HGC HQ at 10am for a run through the order of play: The day is designed for your group to learn the basics of self-sufficiency and put them to the test!

We begin at HQ where you will learn how to skin and butcher an entire deer for your lunch using flint tools, then skewer up the meat to cook over the fire with a selection of HGC marinades and wild taster dishes. During lunch there will be a spot of cider tasting (we provide 5 gallons of cider for the day), then it is off into the wild to identify & taste some of Mother Nature’s bounty from the hedgerows. We can also provide supper, consisting of pit roast Haunch of Venison and all the trimmings.

After walking off the deer, you will embark on a tutorial of basic fire lighting, trapping and shelter building before the bush tucker trial where the stag will have to eat his way through insects, squirrel cock, deer testicle and fish bits.

Then it is time for the HGC challenge, which only the best man (or men) are allowed to know about…

Hunter Gather Cook will unleash the hunter-gatherer within and ensure you pick up plenty of tips for your next adventure into the wild!

If you are interested in booking a Stag do with us, please get in touch and send us an email: bookings@huntergathercook.com for more information, prices and available dates.

‘Staggy staggy stag stag.’