A forager's treasury

319 Pages·2013·9.122 MB·English

by  Knox, Johanna

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urban and rural wildernesses, there is
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to look for. Foraged food is healthy,
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economical and sustainable, but the
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best part about it is the fun you will
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have finding wild food. u guide to findingggggg
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and using
This book is guaranteed to make you z
look at the plants around you in a wild plants

different light. A Forager’s Treasury

features profiles of many edible plants
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commonly found in New Zealand, o
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including advice on where to find
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them, how to harvest them and how
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Johanna
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Cover design: Katy Yiakmis
Cover images: Sarah Featon
COOKING
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A
’
Foragers
treasury
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A
’
Forager s
treasury
Johanna Knox
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First published in 2013
Copyright © Johanna Knox 2013
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitt ed in
any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying,
recording or by any information storage and retrieval system, without prior
permission in writing from the publisher.
Allen & Unwin
Level 3, 228 Queen Street
Auckland 1010, New Zealand
Phone: [phone]
83 Alexander Street
Crows Nest NSW 2065, Australia
Phone:[phone]
Email: [email protected]
Web: www.allenandunwin.com
A catalogue record for this book is available
from the National Library of New Zealand
ISBN 978 1 87750 516 4
Internal design by Katy Yiakmis
Illustrations by Jo Rodwell and Sarah Hargreaves
Printed in Australia by McPherson’s Printing Group
10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1
The paper in this book is FSC® certified.
FSC® promotes environmentally
responsible, socially beneficial and
economically viable management
of the world’s forests.
Cover images
Front and back covers: Featon, Sarah Ann, 1848?–1927. Sarah Featon, Sarah Ann 1847 or
1848–1927 :Karamu. Coprosma robusta. F.113. H.N.Z. fl ora. No 18. [ca 1890]. Featon, Sarah Ann (Porter)
1848–1927 :[New Zealand fl ower studies not published in the Art album of New Zealand fl ora
ca 1889–1926]. Ref: A-171-020. Alexander Turnbull Library, Wellington, New Zealand.
htt p://natlib.govt.nz/records/23205146

Front cover: Sarah Featon, Creeping fuchsia (Fuchsia procumbens) and Konini (Fuchsia exorticata),
c. 1888, watercolours, registration number 1992-0035-2277/57, Purchased 1919; and Puriri (Vitex lucens),
c. 1888, watercolour, registration number 1992-0035-2277/61, Purchased 1919, Museum of New Zealand.
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Contents
h

Introduction 8
Ready to forage

A pott ed history of foraging in Aotearoa, New Zealand 11
Why forage? 13
Th e basic rules of foraging 17
Common poisonous plants 19
Foraging and pest plants 22
Top tips for harvesting and preparing wild foods 23
Th e forager’s store-cupboard staples 25
The treasures
Introduction 29
Taxonomy in a nutshell 29
Adoxaceae — Muskroot family 30
Aizoaceae — Ice plant or fi g marigold family 32
Amaranthaceae — Amaranth family 35
Amaryllidaceae — Amaryllis family 38
Apiaceae — Carrot or parsley family 40
Asparagaceae — Asparagus family 46
Aspleniaceae — Spleenwort family 48
Asteraceae — Daisy or lett uce family 49
Boraginaceae — Borage or forget-me-not family 60
Brassicaceae — Cabbage or mustard family 62
Caryophyllaceae — Pink or carnation family 68
Fabaceae — Pea or legume family 71
Fagaceae — Beech family 75
Geraniaceae — Cranesbill family 78
Hippocastanaceae — Horse chestnut family 81
Iridaceae — Iris family 81
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Juglandaceae — Walnut family 82
Lamiaceae — Mint family 83
Malvaceae — Mallow family 88
Montiaceae — Miner’s lett uce family 92
Myrtaceae — Myrtle family 93
Oleaceae — Olive family 95
Onagraceae — Evening primrose family 100
Oxalidaceae — Wood sorrel family 102
Pinaceae — Pine family 104
Piperaceae — Pepper family 106
Plantaginaceae — Plantain family 109
Poaceae — Grass family 111
Portulacaceae — Purslane family 116
Rosaceae — Rose family 117
Rubiaceae — Coff ee or madder family 125
Rutaceae — Citrus or rue family 129
Seaweed 133
Solanaceae — Nightshade family 136
Tropaeolaceae — Nasturtium family 137
Urticaceae — Nett le family 139
Winteraceae — Horopito family 142
Xanthorrhoeaceae — Aloe family 146
Preserving the harvest

Introduction 149
Tisanes 152
Infused syrups 157
Infused vinegars 168
Wild butt ers 170
Infused oils 174
Infused honey 177
Infused alcohols 180
Th e art of freezing 184
Th e art of drying 187
Th e art of pickling 191
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Choose-your-own-adventure cuisine

Introduction 196
Th e art of the wild salad 200
Th e art of cheesemaking 210
Light meals 214
Wild pasta dishes 227
Winter warmers 232
Sweet treats 235
Cooking for invalids 247
Solar cooking 249
Wild ways

Introduction 252
Wild perfumery 252
Wild bodycare 278
Wild medicine 285
Local colour 292
Wildly entertaining 298
Th e language of wild fl owers 303
Pick ‘n’ nick picnics 306
Bringing the wild to your garden

Native gardens 308
Resources 309
Acknowledgments 317
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IntrodUction
[Forage: verb Search widely for food or provisions]
New Zealand is a nation of foragers. At the very least, can any of us say that
we’ve never picked a blackberry?
Māori have a strong, continuous history of gathering, and a Royal Society study
recently found that while consumption of wild foods is declining in industrialised
countries around the world, in New Zealand over 60 species of wild plants and
animals are still in common use, largely due to Māori traditions.
Th e annual Hokitika Wildfoods Festival has been popular since its launch in
1990, and the Monteith’s Beer & Wild Food Challenge — with a strong emphasis
on hunted as well as gathered food — has been going strong for fourteen years.
Immigrants, especially from Europe, have brought with them their own foraging
traditions, and chefs and cooks such as Italian Alessandra Zecchini regularly
include wild foods in their dishes.
Foraging can be just as integral to medicine and craft s. Both Māori and Pākehā
herbalists, weavers and dyers have always treasured wild plants.
It’s the New Zealand way to head for the bush, the countryside or the beach
when we have leisure time. Foraging for useful or edible treasures is a natural
extension of that.
In recent years blogging, email lists and social networking sites have enabled an
explosion of information-sharing between foragers.
8 A Forager's Treasury
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According to my Mum, my own foraging life began at the age of about 3 when I
unexpectedly squatt ed in the middle of my grandmother’s garden and ate a pansy.
I recall adoring pansies with their litt le monster faces so, maybe, wild-thing-like, I
thought, ‘I’ll eat you up, I love you so.’ Th en again, perhaps I was just exhibiting the
deep foraging instinct that fi res in every child’s mind.
Children love to share nuggets of local wild food lore with each other; how
to nibble on onionweed or wood sorrel; how to eat Romulea rosea seed pods or
suck the nectar from jasmine fl owers. Many people have shared such childhood
memories with me, and I feel almost deprived that at my school all we did was
chew grass stalks now and then.
Nonetheless I was lucky enough to live on a bush-clad subdivision and have
a keen gardener for a Dad. Th ere was plenty of plant life to explore. As well, my
mother was an insanely busy environmental activist, continually dragging my
sister and me to protests, fundraising stalls and urgent meetings. True, it could
be achingly boring, but now and then I found myself wide-eyed and breathless at
some of the back-to-nature projects that ’70s adults were working on. Th e strange
foods! Th e clever craft s! All the Xeroxed books that these shaggy-looking grown-
ups were writing about their passions!
Being an excitable child, I embarked on my own projects. I made cosmetics
— especially face-packs — and enlisted my younger sister Andrea to lie still each
morning while I plastered her face with bananas and oatmeal and bits of random
garden plant. I stripped apples from my father’s tree and dug a small pit in the
ground so I could bury them, hoping to surprise and delight my family by bringing
out this fresh supply in the depths of winter. (Th ey were surprised, but not so
delighted.)
I also remember making a birthday present for my wonderful friend Vanessa
Rhodes by infusing water with rosemary and decanting it into an old perfume
bott le. When Vanessa upended the bott le onto her wrist, out plopped a shocking
lump of blue mould that quivered on her skin until she shrieked and hurled it off .
Despite early failures, I continued this kind of dabbling throughout my teenage
years. Th en, in my early twenties, something changed. For the fi rst time I started to
earn a reasonable amount of my own money. Buying things suddenly seemed more
fun than scrounging them and materialism ruled.
Within a few years, another wave of change broke over me. My son was born
and I was washed into a twilit world of human body fl uids, disintegrating sleep
patt erns and single-minded dedication to this small, new cause. Th e dull band of
pain across my head became a part of me, and my inability to remember what I’d
Introduction 9
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