Tastier than Bear's 2: Beacon Hill

I am trying to cook a foraged meal each week that is tastier than the ones that Bear Grylls cooks up for the celebrities he takes into the wilderness with him. Last week's jelly ear mushroom, dandelion root and nettle soup was edible, and probably nutritious, but unfortunately rather tasteless - the main flavour being soil :-( Was it tastier than Bear's wormy omelette though? Not the best start, but now at least I know that jelly ear mushrooms don't taste like mushrooms and are better for absorbing the flavours of the other components.

This week I decided to look for some really flavourful mushrooms - oyster mushrooms. I set off to Beacon Hill for a long walk and to scout around. I really don't know very many mushrooms, but all of the tasty ones I have spotted before at Beacon Hill. Apart from oyster mushrooms, I have seen ceps, bay boletes and chicken-of-the-woods...none of which are in season. Well you never know, I might get lucky.

Beacon Hill in Charnwood Forest, is the 2nd highest peak in Leicestershire, though only 248m (814ft). It still whips up a fair wind at the summit and gives spectacular views in all directions.

It was the site of a bronze age hill fort, and during the summer the upper part is grazed by rare breed sheep, pigs and cattle (and alpaca to protect the sheep from dogs), to maintain the natural heathland habitat.

Lower down the slope is covered with woodland, and more recently some natural play areas and a labyrinth have been added for kids. There is even a woodcutters shed where there was some chainsaw carving in progress.

Beacon Hill is the site for the National Forest's Woodfair which is held on the August bank holiday. It is an opportunity to see the woodcarving and other woodland skills in action and buy some locally crafted natural products (like the chopping board I bought last year).

Below is the 'Old Man of Beacon Hill'.

This theme has been introduced in many of the carvings around the hill. There are also carvings of little fairy houses in the labyrinth, but I can't go in there with my dog.

Instead we walked through the woods and admired some of the shelters that have been built by visitors. The one below was the best.

 

There is only one thing that irritates me about Beacon Hill and that is the strawbale shelter that has been built.

It looks lovely with it's stone base, thick curvy walls and green roof, but as a demonstration of the benefits of building with strawbale it is a bit rubbish.

The main benefit of strawbale is the super-insulating properties, but anyone visiting this shelter wouldn't notice those because it is an open shelter and even has large gaps in the walls.

Secondly, on the wall inside is the story of the three little pigs and the big bad wolf who blows down the house of straw. This re-enforces a message of a weak and vulnerable building, because a clever pig would build his house of bricks!

If you continue reading it explains why this strawbale structure is strong and how it is built, but I don't feel this is the best way to get this across. I need to do a post on some real strawbale buildings soon.

The ground under the beech trees was covered in leaves and empty beech nut cases. When I was a kid at primary school, my friend and I used to walk past a big beech tree each day. We would collect handfuls of the tiny little triangular nuts to take to school, and sit at our desks picking the shells off and munching on the tiny but tasty morsels. Really beech nuts are small and fiddly and other than showing them to my kids, I have never bothered with them since.

But the prospect of having just a few tasty nuts for my foraged meal was worth a bit of a hunt through the carpet of leaves. I knew that there were still some nuts about, because every flat stone or tree stump had the remnants of a squirrels dinner on it (The beech nut is top right in photo below). But every little triangular nut I picked up was empty and could be squashed flat between my fingers. It is only the fat ones that have a nut inside.

I soon gave up and focused on mushrooms, but really there were very few to be seen. Plenty of hoof fungus which isn't edible.

 

However I found a small cluster of oyster mushrooms. I wasn't sure they would taste great fried without butter, and didn't want to waste them, so I just picked two smallish ones. I also gathered the tops of some sticky weed, with a plan to make a salad. For the rest of the ingredients I decided to use the weeds from my garden. Apart from the fact that it is illegal to dig up the roots of plants without permission, it just makes sense to combine a bit of weeding with dinner.

 

My back garden is very shady and home to plenty of wood avens, The roots smell and taste mildly of cloves. Given how flavourless last weeks meal was, I wanted to find flavourful ingredients this week. I had a munch on a wood aven root and it was really rather pleasant and made my mouth feel very fresh. I might try making the recipe for mouthwash in one of the books, but for today I decided to make tea, as the roots are tiny, so won't be filling. I found a couple of small dandelions too. The roots don't taste too bad raw, but I decided to fry them with the mushroom for added flavour. The leaves went in the salad.

 

My front garden is sunny and the weeds are mainly red valerian (above) and my most hated weed, ground elder. It turns out that the leaves of both of these are edible too. What luck! So I weeded harvested a bucket of them. It is a shame that the ground elder roots aren't edible as it would have looked like a bowl of noodles.

The red valerian and a really lovely texture, but for me it tasted vile, so that was taken off the menu. The ground elder was great though with a mild parsley flavour. According to John Wright, in 'River Cottage Handbook No. 7: Hedgerow', ground elder was introduced to the UK as a popular vegetable, but then despite growing out of fashion it continued to grow regardless. The flavour should help mask the bitterness of the dandelion leaves, as I have no dressing to add.

 

I started chopping the oyster mushrooms and out crawled some little white maggots. Now Bear Grylls may think 'Great - extra protein', but for me it was not what I had planned for the menu! So I ended up discarding one of the mushrooms and finely chopping and inspecting the other.

In the photo above clockwise from the top right there are wood aven roots, sticky weed tips, oyster mushrooms, dandelion root, ground elder, dandelion leaves and more dandelion in the centre. Once the mushroom hit the frying pan the smell was divine. Frying with water worked, except that it evaporates very quickly, so you have to keep adding more. I decided to add a little extra liquid to give a bit of mushroomy sauce for the salad, and a sprinkle of salt.

 

Ok so it may be a small portion this week, but actually it tastes great. I could really eat this. The dandelion roots were thinner and straighter, so easier to clean and took on the mushroom flavour. The salad had flavour too because of the ground elder, although the bitterness of the dandelion wasn't completely masked. Obviously frying in butter or adding a dressing would really make this, but I am sufficiently happy :-) What do you guys think? Better than Bear's?

Twentysteps

Being on the edge of Charnwood Forest, means that Loughborough has some wonderful places to explore. Charnwood Forest is an area where you can find the oldest rocks in England, and it is this mix of woodlands and rocky outcrops which is so brilliant for adventures. Apparently, hundreds of years ago, Charnwood was designated as a chase rather than a forest, meaning it was an area for the gentry to hunt deer. This may explain why it is more forest by name than by nature. It has plenty of woodlands, though not the large dense forested areas that the name implies.

 

The week after Christmas we had a sprinkling of snow and visited one of the kids favourite spots for a walk. Although really it is not the walking but the rock climbing that the kids love. They would climb over all the rocky outcrops on the way up the hill and then have a race down the parallel grassy slope all the way back to the car. Cademan woods is near Whitwick, about 7 miles from Loughborough, and other than the odd mountain biker, or dog walker it is very quiet (at least until we arrive).

The rocks give it such a dramatic landscape, but the best part for me is 'Twentysteps'. Almost hidden from the path, there are cut stone steps leading to the summit of one of the outcrops. The top photo shows the view from the path. There is a large stone hiding the 'entrance' to the peak, which is now overgrown.

It is enchanting, like the hidden stairway to a magical castle and I am grateful to have found it and enjoyed so many happy hours there with my kids and their friends. I would love to know the history behind the steps. Who carved them, when and why? They feel hundreds of years old to me.

I can imagine that maybe it was a hidden lookout post, to keep watch for marauding armies, or the location of a warning beacon. It may even have been a hideout, or is there a secret cave full of treasure hidden within ;-) For children it is a place filled with opportunities for imaginative play, from storming the 'castle' to hiding from attackers or just climbing over all the rocks. It could be Rapunzel's tower, Sleeping Beauty's overgrown castle or the mountain the Pied Piper leads the children to, How amazing to have this as your den?

There are so many enchanting places, but you won't discover them if you walk the same path each time and stick to the main routes. It might mean overcoming some of those excuses that we put in the way like.....I don't know where this path is going, I might get lost, it may be trespassing, it will be muddy, I need someone to guide me. As with many things in life, just do it and it will be fun.

I really wanted to find a wise quote to express how I feel about this, but then I came across Jodi Ettenberg's wonderful blog Legal Nomads and an inspirational presentation from 2011. Although Jodi's experience is with travelling to exotic places, her message relates just as well to exploring your local surroundings or just life in general. Be grateful and open to opportunities.