Foraging Fortnight

Scotland’s first ever Foraging Fortnight is now well underway with a great programme of events ranging from woodland walks and wild food feasts to wellness workshops and foraged cocktails.

This brand new festival brings together over a hundred events across five diverse regions of Scotland: from the rolling hills of Lanarkshire, the golden beaches and fields of Fife; the mountains and coast of Moray; to the woodlands and lochs of the Forth Valley and Loch Lomond area; and the diverse islands of Orkney.

Seaweed forager Jayson Byles shows local children his craft in Fife’s East Neuk

The LEADER funded project will take place from 31^st August – 15^th September, allowing people to explore Scotland’s natural places and increase their knowledge of wild food and medicinal plants

The excellent programme includes:

• The Scottish Wild Food Festival: taking place on 14^th September on Cardross Estate in the Loch Lomond and Trossachs National Park. This brand-new event will include a series of hands-on foraging, mindful workshops, folklore walks throughout the estate and the chance to try freshly prepared food and drink made of wild ingredients. The event will also include spectacular one-table feasts from Buck & Birch’s Rupert Waites and Marysia Paszkowska of Monachyle Mhor.
• Living Off the Land: Eva Gunnare, a food and culture connoisseur from Swedish Lapland will be running a series of events across all five regions sharing her insights into foraging in the Arctic Circle, blending traditional recipes with modern creations.
• Forage to Make Hedgerow Jelly: A free event at Fife’s Cambo Estate showing participants how to forage for ingredients to make your own hedgerow jelly.
• Clyde Valley Apple Walk: an exploration of Clyde Valley’s heritage apple trees with a historical walk through Kirkfieldbank Community Orchard where the past is brought to and nature, conservation and food production go hand in hand.
• Explore the Edible Seashore: the opportunity to explore marine life and discover the edible seaweeds that grow locally in Moray along with a demonstration to show how coastal ingredients can be cooked.
• Old Ways and New Journeys: this Orkney event contains fascinating insights from instructor Zeki Basan, who grew up in a remote part of the Cairngorms. A glacier guide in Iceland and a wilderness instructor in Scotland, he describes the skills of survival used in the past in Scotland and by indigenous people today.

The festival programme has been designed to encourage people of all ages to participate safely and responsibly in different foraging activities, while discovering some of the most breath-taking parts of Scotland. Offering a range of free and paid-for tickets, each region has tailored the two-week festival to showcase its surroundings and unique local flora. Participants will be able to forage for medicinal plants, learn how to cook with wild ingredients or attend one of the many feasts of foraged food.

Catharine Idle, Programme Coordinator for LEADER in Fife, said:

“This is the first time an event like this has taken place in Scotland and I’m delighted by the strength, diversity and ambition of the programme.  From mindful workshops and wild food feasts to talks from internationally renowned wilderness experts, Foraging Fortnight truly celebrates Scotland’s rural areas and shows the wealth of opportunities for everyone to get involved in foraging.”

The festival aims to leave a legacy of increased public awareness and expertise of sustainable foraging along with a greater understanding of the health and wellbeing benefits of foraging in natural environments. The festival will be repeated in May 2020 in four of the regions and in September 2020 in Orkney.

Foraging Fortnight events will encourage adherence to Scotland’s Outdoor Access Code and organisers have put together foraging guidelines to ensure that those taking part are doing so in a safe and responsible way.

The full programme will be announced on www.foragingfortnight.co.uk .

Foraging Fortnight is part of Scottish Food & Drink Fortnight, which runs from 31^st August to 15^th September.

Marine Harvest Kitchen Theatre at Scotland’s Salmon Festival.

Marine Harvest, Scotland longest established salmon farming company hooked up with five talented Scottish chefs in the Kitchen Theatre at this year’s Scotland’s Salmon Festival to demonstrate a range of healthy and nutritious Scottish salmon dishes.

I was delighted to be there with the chefs, chatting about their dishes and of course the top quality Scottish Salmon being used in the demonstrations.

The country’s no 1 food export proved that it was a the ideal healthy quick cook ingredient for mid week family meals with chefs demonstrating the versatility of salmon in a range of different dishes and cuisines.

With salmon being hailed as the ultimate healthy fast food, the chefs delivered range of quick easy and exciting meals for family dining, along with a few more simple but impressive dishes for special occasions.

Tomatin Whisky and tonic cured salmon prepared by Chef Chris Bond took inspiration from the Distillery’s, Tomatin and Tonic, a twist on a gin and tonic, using whisky instead of gin.

Combining salmon with lemon, dill and a few aromatics produced a stunning and elegant dish; perfect as a starter or a light lunch.

Chef Mark Heirs used Loch Ness gin to cure salmon for his Gin cured salmon with a warm beetroot salad and again, produced a salmon dish that showed the elegance of a whole salmon side as a centre piece for a special meal.

Mark was also keen to demonstrate the versatility of salmon for quick and healthy mid week family meals, all guaranteed to be on the table in less than 20 minutes.

These included, salmon with chorizo and lentil stew and salmon and tomato stew with fennel salad.

Quick and easy to prepare was also the theme for Inverness chef, Alfie Little’s dishes.

His roast salmon with a spicy broth and salmon and seafood in a bag were both cooked up in under 20 minutes again endorsing salmon’s well earned label of the ultimate fast food and demonstrating its versatility with different ingredients and flavours.

MacDonald Hotels chefs, Kat Wardrope and Ed Blackhall brought a touch of culinary elegance to the table with two showstopper salmon dishes.

Impress your dinner guests by cooking Kat’s vibrant salmon, beetroot buckwheat, smoked beetroot and lime crisp. The dish has a few elements that can be cooked ahead, meaning less time slaving in the kitchen and more time to relax.

Ed’s showstopper, salmon, pickled walnut crust, samphire, salmon roe, Pernod scented cucumber gazpacho and beetroot crisps, was equally impresssive with the gazpacho bringing the freshness of summer flavours to the dish.

Food loving locals were given lots of tips including how to get that crispy, crunchy skin when cooking salmon and advice on the best pans to use when cooking salmon at home – stainless steel or non stick?  With a range of top quality non stick pans provided by Stellar Kitchenware and Judge Cookware being put to the test by the chefs, the Stellar Rock Titanium pans and Stellar Radiant were clear winners.

Scottish rapeseed oil producer, Summer Harvest Oils generously provided their cold pressed oil for the demonstrations and all chefs agreed that using Scottish rapeseed oil was the perfect choice for pan frying salmon.

Download the Marine Harvest Recipe App for fantastic Scottish salmon recipes including some of those cooked in the Marine Harvest Kitchen Theatre.