I decided that it’s time to post in English. Mistakes will be my very often guests. But I’m a beginner! 🙂
As my Polish folks know, I’m in London around 8 month and during this period everything has changed – my life, enviroment, job(s), points of view on food, my chef’s skills. Since I’m here I’ve almost forgot a bit how to be close with nature, which is the most important thing in my life. Over week ago I’d got an opportunity to say hello to the Nature once again, out of London.
In England it is definetely spring. Some people start to say that it’s summer (sic!), but for sure is much more sunny, warm and not so windy, than before. People are more active, they smile much more often, trees are going to be greener. Spring is also an opportunity to eat very young/fresh and pretty healthy food like spring vegetables or wild food. I was convinced that it will be truly hard to eat in way that I used to eat in Poland. I mean seasonal, fresh food, in macrobiotic way with extra quantity of wild food like nettle, sorrel, wild garlic, elderflower and so on. London offers food from around the world, what is a huge advantage. But on the other hand it’s very easy to get lost in meanders of exotic and oriental food or British, fatty cuisine. I’ve got a problem. I wanted eat and try everything and forgot that sometimes it is not harmonious and seasobnable. However, spring remains me who I am and what I suppose to eat. And also I can say, that I was tottaly rapt when I heard about wild food expedition, what means harvest some wild goodies far away from London, bring them to the city and cook.
Expedition was Inspiral‘s Head Chef‘s initiative. Good stimulus was changing menu in the cafe, full of fresh, wild foood.
We took some packed lunch and books about wild plants and herbs and hit the road to Box Hill, Surrey. I need to admit that I was pretty suprised what I saw in there. Open space, trees everywhere, brook and suuuun 🙂 And herbs, of course. Now is good season to harvest wild garlic and nettle (my granny used to say that nettel is the queen of herbs). We have found dandelion and violet as well, but were focused on mentioned garlic and nettle. When we came in to the forest, everyone could smell very intense aroma of wild garlic. Amazing!
After few hours of harvesting, climbing up and down the hill and light lunch we were ready to come back to London with number of bags full of wild precious. It was my best adventure since I’m in London. Srsl.
From last Thursday you can try new menu at InSpiral, which contains wild food as wild garlic and nettle. It is worth.
Finaly I would like to say one thing more. This post is not an advert of InSpiral. This post is part of my chef’s life. I work in two totally different cafes and I would like to go shares on my experience with you.
Next time I will show you what I’ve prepared from wild, natural ingridients in The Gallery Cafe‘s style 😛
jerusalem artichoke
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