BL-24 - Flipbook - Page 99
FOOD & DRINK
Water Pepper
I suspect I’m the only forager who begins every walk with
the phrase ‘I’m sorry to disappoint you but 90% of this
stuff is just a shit substitute for spinach’. Despite what you
might think, I’m not decrying nature’s bounty in any way.
It’s all clean, healthy, nutritious and worth eating...but the
bulk of it tastes like lawn.
However, there are some notable exceptions and water
pepper is one of my favourite treats. This is one of those
plants you’ll have seen but not noticed, and now you’ll
start seeing it everywhere: by rivers and in marshy areas,
anyway. It has long, slender leaves and stems covered in
buds that end in tiny pink 昀氀owers.
Take a leaf, give it a nibble and you’ll suddenly get the
shock of your life. This little plant has a chilli-pepper hit
so unexpectedly Tijuana that it will 昀椀ll your mouth with
joyous spicy 昀椀re and have you reaching for a glass of milk.
The wood hedgehog mushroom
Hedgehog Mushrooms
So named because of the downward pointing spines, as
opposed to gills or pores, under the cap. The spines or
“teeth” give this mushroom its other moniker, “sweettooth”. But actually they’re not spines at all, they’re soft
and perfectly edible.
Some people brush them off, probably the same people that
chill blackberries to tease out the harmless inhabitants,
presumably because they’re afraid fruit 昀氀y larvae might
invade their body and burst out of their chest over breakfast
like the Alien...give me strength.
A fairly easy mushroom to identify, the hedgehog is
usually a pale buff to apricot colour, while the caps can be
irregular in shape and even quite lumpy. But the teeth are
the unique to the hedgehog, as far as I know.
Water pepper (Persicaria hydropiper)
Appearing in late summer and autumn, I tend to 昀椀nd them
in mixed woodland. When it comes to mushrooms, beech,
oak and birch form the Holy Trinity, but I often 昀椀nd a few
conifers (spruce and Scots pine, for example) dotted around
my favourite mushroom spots. The hedgehog is often hard
to spot, but once you 昀椀nd one, you’ll inevitably 昀椀nd more.
This is, hands down, my favourite eating mushroom
because of its 昀椀rm texture and wonderfully nutty 昀氀avour.
As with all the best mushrooms, just cook gently in butter,
possibly with a little garlic, and serve it just as it is, or on a
slice of toast.
I 昀椀nd it wonderful that something derided as a common
weed, destined to meet its fate at the hands of the nation’s
strimmers and lawnmowers, is actually a proper culinary
ingredient that will drag any disillusioned supermarket
salad into the warm light of edibility.
Anti-microbial and astringent, it was traditionally used
to treat wounds; also, as is common with wild plants, as a
diuretic. Folklore held that it could promote 昀椀ery passion
and 昀椀delity whilst also keeping evil witchcraft at bay.
Witches weren’t evil, of course, they were some of the few
who actually practiced effective herbal medicine, and yet
they were persecuted by imbecilic zealots who preferred
quack-like cures such as covering one’s body in burned owl
feathers to cure gout.
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