Category: Wild and foraged

Hungarian goose and barley (Ludaskasa)

I have a great colleague who is really into cooking, so it is a real pleasure to meet and discuss new cooking ideas. I really like Hungarian food, and he’d been experimenting with confit wild goose leg. So this is where we ended up. 

This is a traditional Hungarian recipe, I’m sure there are many versions. I made mine with dried porcini mushrooms, but there are recipes that don’t use them. It takes a while to make, so be prepared. 

First of all, when presented with a wild goose, peel off the skin without plucking it. Take off the breast meat and save that for another day, in the freezer. Next, take the legs, trim them and cook them in hot duck or goose fat. The legs should be completely covered, and then put in a covered dish in a very low oven, around 90C for 4 to 6 hours. 

Next, while the goose legs are being cooked slowly, make a goose soup. 

INGREDIENTS FOR GOOSE SOUP

  • 1 goose carcase, including liver, heart, gizzard, if possible
  • 2 tbsps goose or duck fat
  • 1 large onion, cut into wedges
  • 2 large carrots, peeled and chopped
  • 4 sticks of celery, chopped
  • 2 red peppers, chopped
  • a couple of bay leaves
  • 15g dried porcini mushrooms
  • Salt and pepper

METHOD FOR GOOSE SOUP

  • In a large stock pot, melt the fat and fry the onion. As it starts to soften, add the celery, carrots and peppers, and cook until they are beginning to brown
  • Add the goose carcase, enough water to cover, salt and pepper, bayleaves and the porcini mushrooms. 
  • Bring to a low simmer, and simmer for four hours. When the soup is made, cool it and remove the remains of the carcase. Strain the soup. Any cooked meat on the carcase, plus the heart and liver can be shredded and reserved. 

Now you are ready for the next step. You won’t use all of the strained soup, and it is good in its own right. It also freezes well in case you want to make more of the Orzotto. 

INGREDIENTS FOR THE LUDASKASA

  • Goose fat
  • Hot stock
  • Saffron
  • White wine
  • Confit goose legs
  • Shredded goose meat from the soup preparation
  • 160g pearl barley soaked in water for 1 hour or more
  • Chopped parsley

METHOD: 

  • Reheat the soup
  • Take a cup of hot goose stock and add a pinch of saffron
  • In a large pan, heat 2 tbsp goose fat on high, and add the soaked and drained barley. Toast it for a minute or so, and then add a glass of white wine. Let this cook away and then start adding the stock, a ladleful at a time. I started with the saffron stock first. Simmer away the moisture from each ladleful before adding the next, just like making a risotto. Keep adding the stock until the barley is well cooked and tender. 
  • Serve in a deep bowl, stir in the shredded meat, and top with the confit goose legs and chopped parsley. 

I found the barley part of the dish to be the bit I liked the best, and I had plenty of goose soup left at the end, so I can make that again. 

Grilled lobster with charmoula butter

Thanks to a kind gift of two very lively lobsters, we had this delicious meal during the week. In honour of the lobsters, we also had a bottle of champagne, the whole evening was very messy and delicious. 

We learned several lessons. First off, we split the lobsters before grilling them. It is better to use a finer grill support. The claws are best boiled in a separate pan for around 10 minutes. The half lobster tails need to be grilled on high for 10 minutes, with the butter poured on before serving, with slices of brown bread. 

If you don’t have a grill, you could boil the lobsters whole for ten minutes, and then split in half. 

INGREDIENTS:

  • Two local lobsters, claws removed and cut in half
  • 100g butter
  • 2 cloves of garlic, finely chopped
  • 2 tbsp chopped coriander leages
  • 2 tbsp chopped parsley
  • 2 tsp lemon juice
  • a pinch of Aleppo chilli pepper, or other mild chilli pepper
  • 1/2 tsp ground cumin
  • 1/4 tsp hot smoked paprika 
  • Salt, to taste 

METHOD:

  • Boil the claws for ten minutes. Grill the tails for ten minutes under a hot gril
  • While the lobster is cooking, melt the butter in a small pan, and add the garlic, and simmer in the butter for a minute. 
  • Add the rest of the ingredients, season with salt. 

To serve, pour the dressing into individual ramekins. You can pour the sauce onto the lobster, or dip the lobster in. Mop up the juices and the left-over sauce with thick slices of white bread. 

 

Goose and paprika

The flavour of green sweet peppers and goose just go so well together. This is a rich stew with a Hungarian twist, rich with paprika, peppers and tomatoes. After I made this, I found lots of recipes from Hungary using goose, but this is not a classic. I think there is a similar dish using chicken but it has a lot of sour cream in it, unlike this rich stew. 

I think it should probably be served with Hungarian nokedli, a sort of pasta. I had mine with linguine. 

INGREDIENTS:

  • 2 tbsp lard (or olive oil)
  • 3 wild goose breasts,
  • 1 large onion, chopped
  • 3 cloves of garlic, finely chopped
  • 1 red bell pepper, chopped
  • 1 green bell pepper, chopped
  • 4 heaped tsp sweet paprika
  • 2 tsp caraway seeds
  • 1 tsp cumin seeds
  • 1 tsp coriander seeds
  • 1 tbsp tomato paste
  • Chicken stock
  • 1 can chopped tomatoes
  • salt and pepper
  • chopped parsley to serve

METHOD:

  • Heat the oil or lard in a casserole dish, and fry the chopped peppers and onions. Once they begin to soften, add the garlic and spices, and continue to cook over a medium heat. 
  • Add the tomato paste, paprika and tinned tomatoes and bring to a simmer. Cook until the sauce is nice and thick. Season to taste. If the sauce looks a bit thick, add chicken stock and then cook it down. 
  • Version a: I fried off the goose meat, cubed, added to the stew and cooked it in a slow oven, around 120C for 4 hours. The goose was very tasty, but it took a while to get tender. 
  • Version b: I cut the goose meat into goujons, fried them quicky and put them onto the pasta and sauce on the plate. Version b was quicker and the goose was tender, but the flavour was not as good. 

Served with noodles and garnished with chopped parsley. 

 

 

Rabbit paella

I’ve been itching to make rabbit paella since the spring, when we went on holiday to Madrid, and I realised that rabbit paella is a thing. Paella can combine many ingredients, it is essentially a one pot mixture based on what is available. I’ve had a couple of rabbits in the freezer, and once I had access to some fresh garden vegetables, I defrosted one, and this is what I did:

INGREDIENTS:

  • 2 tbsp olive oil
  • 2 tsp salt
  • 1 small rabbit, jointed
  • 2 chicken thighs, boned and chopped
  • 2 tsp smoked sweet paprika
  • 2 cloves of garlic, chopped
  • 100g artichoke hearts (in oil, or fresh, optional)
  • 100g broad beans or green beans
  • 100g runner beans, sliced
  • 1 can of chopped tomatoes, pureed
  • a couple of generous pinches of saffron
  • 1 litre or so of chicken or rabbit stock
  • 400g paella rice
  • 1 tsp dried rosemary
  • A squeeze of lemon juice

METHOD:

  • Add the oil to a large pan, such as a wok, shallow casserole dish or paella pan, at least 25cm across, and deep enough for all of the ingredients to cook together. Heat it up and fry the rabbit for around 3 minutes, then add the chicken and fry for another 5 minutes, seasoning the meat with salt. Cook until the meat is browned. 
  • Add the paprika and one pinch of saffron and keep cooking for another 5minutes, before adding the garlic, broad beans, runner beans, artichoke hearts, dried rosemary and pureed tomatoes. Continue to stir and cook together for a further 5 minutes. 
  • Meanwhile, heat the stock in another pan and add the rest of the saffron, leaving it to steep. 
  • Add 2 cups of the stock to the fried rabbit and chicken and let it simmer for around 20 minutes. 
  • Add the rice – traditionally in an x shape to ensure it cooks evenly through the cooked ingredients. Add any remaining stock. 
  • Cover the paella with a lid and leave to cook on low for another 20 minutes. Check at around 10 and 15 minutes to ensure that it is not cooking too dry, you may need to add a little more water or stock
  • At the end of cooking, let the paella rest for around 5 minutes before serving with a squeeze of lemon.

Dried Apricot and Angelica Jam

I made this in a large quantity the first time, which was a mistake. When making jam, smaller quantities are easier to manage. This was the outcome of round 2. I also used local angelica, which has a strange and pungeant smell on its own, but divine in apricot jam. The wild angelica locally is Angelica sylvestris, and you need to be sure of your plant identification. It is very common locally. 

INGREDIENTS:

  • 500g dried apricots, chopped
  • 1.9 litres water
  • 3 stems of angelica, finely chopped
  • 2 lemons
  • 1.5 kg sugar

METHOD:

  • Chop the angelica and apricots, and cover with the water in the jam pan. Leave to soak for 48 to 72 hours
  • Simmer for around 20 minutes, stirring occasionally, until the apricots are soft. 
  • Add the sugar and lemon juice and stir until dissolved, then boil rapidly to setting point. Pour into warmed clean jam jars. 

Candied angelica

Angelica grows in profusion across North Uist, Benbecula and South Uist. First, rosettes of dark green leaves appear, and then from the centre, around the end of June, great fists of flower buds start fighting their way up above the grass, and then in July, domed panicles of white flowers come out. It is related to Alexanders, and you can candy their stems as well. Other endemic plants in the family, not all edible, include hogweed, and wild carrot, sweet cicely and wild parsnip. 

It is Angelica sylvestris that grows wild here, but there are cultivated varieties with a pinkish tinge, and also Angelica archangelica, a much larger cousin. You can read more about the botanical aspects on the Botanical Society of Scotland blog.  

This year, I decided I would work out how to make candied angelica. We used to get it in tiny squares and slivers, decorating cup cakes, and it is used as a flavouring in gin. First of all, at the very start of July, when the buds were beginning to burst upwards, I cut the stems while they were still tender. I blanched them, filling the kitchen with the most peculiar aroma. I left them in the boiling water for ten minutes and left them to cool. I reserved the poaching liquid. Once the stems were cool enough to handle, I peeled the outer layer off with a small sharp knife. 

At this stage, you could chop finely and add to rhubarb jam, about 50g per kilo of rhubarb.

To make candied angelica. I weighed the peeled angelica, and then added an equal amount of sugar to the poaching water. The ideal proportions would be for each 50g of stem, add 25g sugar, 25g glucose and 75ml water, but we can’t get glucose and I didn’t worry too much about weighing anything. I boiled the sugar and poaching water to a syrup and then added the angelica, and left it to cool. The next day, I removed the angelica, brought the syrup to a boil and then added the angelica again as it cooled. I repeated this every day until the syrup was the consistency of honey. I left the angelica in the syrup for a week at this point, then removed it and let it dry before storing in a sealed jar.

This is definitely more useful as a flavouring than as a sweet snack, the taste is completely unique, slightly bitter, and very herbal. The best thing I did with it was to add it to rhubarb jam after blanching it. It adds a hint of gin to the jam. 

 

 

Orache

I have been continuing my adventures with wild food, and finally overcame my anxiety about trying orache. I am not 100% sure which variety I picked in the end; it was not exactly like the pictures in any of my wild food books. For reference I looked at ‘Food for Free’ by Richard Mabey, Prehistoric cooking by Jacqui Wood, and ‘Edible Seashore’ by John Wright. This last book is one of the River Cottage Handbooks. All three books recommend orache as a wild food, similar to spinach but not producing as many leaves per plant. The Orache plant family is related to ‘Fat Hen’, an edible weed that I find on my compost heap, and other plants in the goosefoot family.

This was also the first road test of the Richard Mabey book, and it let me down by not discussing or referring to the huge range of orache plants. The Prehistoric cookery book also hints at the possibilities, but it was the Edible seashore book and google that were the most helpful.

Anyway, off we set with our bucket, across the dunes and down to the shore to see what we could find. We found a lot of orache, several varieties, growing in the dune grasses, on the edge of the machair, and then on the higher parts of the shore. We found a whole area of frosted orache (Atriplex laciniata), good big plants with lots of shoots. The plants were low, lying, growing straight out of the sand. The leaves were frosted and rough, and there were clusters of small buds towards the tips, arising in the joints where the leaves leave the stem. I took one shoot of each plant we saw, and ended up with about three good bunches. This was enough to feed three people; like spinach, it cooks down a lot.

When I got home, I rinsed it off to remove the sand, and then cooked it in garlic butter for about three minutes. It was very good indeed, better than spinach, and a good side dish. Next time I see it growing well, no worries, I would pick it again.

In terms of nutrition, it was extremely fresh and extremely local, so there was minimal wastage of nutrients. It was better cooked, and the books agreed with me on that one. It is hard to get data on the nutritional value of Orache, but it is reputed to be rich in calcium, vitamin c, vitamin b1, and iron.

Venison stew

This is a delicious stew with a lot of sauce, excellent with cous cous. I used a lot of celery, which went well with the rich taste of venison. 

INGREDIENTS:

  • 700g diced venison e.g. from haunch or leg
  • 2 tbsp olive oil
  • 4 sticks of celery, diced
  • 2 small onions, or one large onion, diced
  • 4 carrots, diced
  • 2 cloves of garlic, minced
  • 2 tsp herbe de Provence (I used a mixture of dried basil, dried oregano, dried savoury, dried thyme, dried rosemary, bay leaves)
  • 1 scant tsp salt
  • black pepper
  • 1 400g tin of tomatoes
  • 3 dashes of Worcestershire sauce
  • 1 litre of stock

METHOD:

  • Dice the venison, and fry in a casserole pan in hot oil until browned, and then set aside.
  • In the same pan, fry the onion, celery and carrots over a medium heat for around 10 minutes.
  • Add the garlic, herbs and salt and pepper, and fry for a minute or two, before adding the tomatoes, stock and Worcestershire sauce, and bringing to a simmer. 
  • Add the venison, stir together and then cook in the oven at 140C for 3 hours, or until the venison is tender.

You could add dumplings or potatoes. The potatoes are best added to the stew about 40 minutes before serving. Dumplings take about 30 minutes to cook in a stew. 

Rabbit with white wine and celery

Another rabbit recipe. I keep finding more, and I’m still working through them; who knew there were so many? This one was especially tasty, and I would make it again, no bother. It might be good with green olives as well. I served it with polenta, but mashed potatoes would be good as well. 

INGREDIENTS: 

  • 1 wild rabbit, jointed
  • 30g butter, or a mixture of butter and lard
  • 1 onion, peeled and finely chopped
  • 2 cloves of garlic, peeled and finely chopped
  • 2 stalks of celery, finely chopped
  • 1 can of chopped tomatoes, or 250g ripe tomatoes, peeled and chopped
  • 300ml dry white wine
  • salt and pepper

METHOD:

  • In a large casserole dish or lidded saucepan, brown the rabbit pieces in the butter and lard. Remove from the pan and put to one side
  • In the butter and lard, brown the onion for five minutes, and then add the celery and garlic for another couple of minutes.
  • Add the tomatoes, and simmer for five minutes
  • Return the rabbit to the pan, and pour over the white wine. Season with salt and pepper and bring to a simmer
  • Reduce the heat and cook slowly for around 2 hours, or until the rabbit is nice and tender. If the sauce is looking a bit dry, add some more wine. 

Serve with polenta or mashed potatoes. 

Venison slow-cooked in red wine

This is a very simple French recipe for cooking a piece of venison weighing around 1kg all in one piece. There is the small matter of remembering to marinade it for a day first, but there is remarkably little fuss. 

INGREDIENTS:

  • 900g venison for stewing, all in one piece and tied in an oval shape. 
  • 4 tbsp port
  • 4 tbsp red wine vinegar
  • 1 tbsp olive oil
  • 2 tbsp white flour
  • 1 large onion, sliced finely
  • pork or bacon rind, in one piece
  • A little red wine if required, around 200ml
  • salt and pepper

METHOD:

  • Put the venison into a container with a lid, along with the port, vinegar and olive oil. The venison should just fit. Marinade for 24 hours.
  • Take out the meat, pat it dry and coat it with white flour. Put it into a dish with a lit that is just the right size, and pour over the marinade and season with salt and pepper. Cover with a layer of sliced onions, and then the pork rind. 
  • Cover with a lid and cook in a slow oven, around 130 to 140C for 4 hours. You may need to check up on the venison during the cooking. If it is looking a little dry, add some red wine. 

When it is cooked it will be very tender and shred easily. Serve on hot plates with celeriac mash, a green vegetable, and with red currant or rowan jelly on the side.