The flavours and textures of some wild foods can be challenging to our modern palettes. We have got used to the easy sweetness of tame vegetables, while importing piquant spices from abroad to make them more exciting…

This is a delightful, easy-to-come-by plant that can be cooked like spinach, added to stir-fries etc, but is at its best raw. I love to employ its earthy flavour in winter salads with pickled fish, beetroot and elderberry vinegar, though it works well as a mild “bulker” with sharper-tasting leaves in spring…

The want of a decent guidebook can be all that stands between the novice forager and a great meal or a trip to the hospital – or worse. Here I give some general advice on finding the right foraging guidebook…

Some of the best fungi guides aren’t especially interested in wild food – in fact some have no information on edibility at all. Hopefully these brief reviews will help you select the best guide(s) for you.

Brief reviews of some of the general foraging books (covering plants, fungi and possibly more in one volume) in my collection with guidance on their relative strengths and weaknesses.