Wild food foraging

Searching for supper on the Cornish coast

Caroline Davey is busy preparing a marinade of mugwort and peppercorns for the pigeon we are going to be eating later in the day. You heard right: mugwort. Otherwise known as wild wormwood, which is basically a weed.

We've come down to the rugged West Cornish coast to take part in a foraging weekend. For the next two days we're going to pick wild herbs, vegetables, fruits, nuts, fungi, flowers and seaweeds and, well, eat them.

Davey, an ecologist, set up her company, Fat Hen, a few years ago with the aim to teach foraging to other people plus the gourmet cooking techniques used to cook the foraged produce.

After spending a long winter hunched over my desk looking at the rain through my office window, I couldn't wait to join her and a handful of other people who had all come to escape the gloom of the city.

The night before we had checked into nearby Downs Barn Farm, a fantastic bed and breakfast where the roll-top bath affords breathtaking views over the surrounding farmland and the bedroom looks on to the sea.

With the pigeon marinaded, we all pile into Davey's van and make our way to the first stop: a lovely beach with turquoise sea where Davey introduces us to rock samphire (a salty green vegetable that grows in abundance on British beaches) and wild spinach – more ingredients to make our lunch. Davey explains the enormous variety of seaweed that lines our shores and says that almost all are edible (that's almost all: my advice is to sign up for a course with Fat Hen before you start munching your way around the beaches of Britain).

We respectfully snip at swathes of seaweed swaying in rockpools, and after gathering enough for lunch we move onto our second spot: some hedgerows a little further inland. In addition to telling us what we can eat, Davey also tells us what to avoid. It is very easy to mistake some species for others, and this can have deadly consequences. She shows us Hemlock, deadly if eaten and surprisingly similar to Alexander, another species that we pick as an accompaniment to our meal.

Our final stop involves leaving the van and walking a couple of miles back to The Fat Hen’s kitchen. On our walk we nibble on three-cornered leek, wild sorrel and other strange delicacies such as pig nuts (a small plant with a long stem and edible bulb) which tastes very similar to water chestnut. Davey really knows her stuff and it is astonishing to see how much there is available in nature to eat.

Back at the kitchen we start preparing lunch – washing sand from the seaweed, peeling and slicing all the wild plants and herbs we have gathered. The menu consists of seaweed and oatmeal cakes for starters with a cream and mussel sauce, a main of pigeon marinaded in mugwort and peppercorns with potato dauphinoise and side dish of steamed Alexander drizzled with olive oil and pepper. Desert is a delicious pannacotta with a fennel seed shortbread biscuit and Japanese knotweed accompaniment (similar to rhubarb when sweated down with sugar and water). The meal is excellent, made even better by being able to sit outside to take in the beautiful Cornish countryside.

The great thing about the Fat Hen course is that you get to try these forgotten edible plants and herbs as well as pick them. It’s interesting to know that years ago many of these ingredients formed part of our everyday diet and that over the years this knowledge has been lost. Your early hunter-gatherer instinct really comes alive again and it's fascinating to find out what you can eat a short walk from your doorstep.

WideWorld stayed at Downs Barn Farm (www.downsbarnfarm.co.uk); 01736 810295. Rooms from £40 per person per night.

We went food foraging with Fat Hen, www.fathen.org; 01736 810156. A wild food taster day  costs £55 per person.

With thanks to Visit Cornwall for organising the trip. See www.visitcornwall.com for inspirational holiday ideas around the area.