Our first series explores how local chefs, restaurateurs, artisans, brewers and distillers are crafting some of the best food and drink you may or may not have heard of, furthering Northern Ireland’s culinary scene and adapting to serve local communities over the pandemic period.
When you get close to the raw materials and taste them at the moment they let go of the soil, you learn to respect them.
Rene Redzepi
We followed Clare McQuillan, Belfast’s forager, around Ormeau Park one drizzly afternoon. We found out, very quickly, that food is everywhere!
Clare forages and creates some of the ‘wildest’ meals around with the ingredients nature provides her. She has a creative and innovative approach to food, centring on health, seasonality and sustainability, which both benefits the environment and your pocket. Renowned for her supper clubs, special events and foraging tours, she is a great example of this new, budding generation of young Northern Irish chefs eager to learn and share their knowledge with simpletons like us.
This is what she had to say on our journey through Ormeau, where, through her guidance, we were treated to a ‘free lunch’, consisting of wild products including rose hips, mustard leaves, sorrels, Hawthorne berries, nettles, barberries, hogweed and wild cherries:
Why foraging?
I started about 5 years ago when I first took a walk with Phil Simpson who leads regular walks on Cavehill. I used to live in North Belfast and was up there all the time, yet was completely unaware of the abundance of food in that area.
At the time I was really just interested in getting out and experiencing something new. I had picked blackberries and wild garlic before – more ‘starter pack’ type foraging ingredients. That day we must have picked about 30 different edible plants. As someone who is obsessed with ingredients and experimenting with my dishes I was like, “Where has this been my whole life?!”
That was it for me. From then on, I needed to know all there is to know about foraging and how I can incorporate these ingredients into my recipes.
I got all the books and started connecting with people. I would take loads of photographs, too, and just spend time outdoors. By accident, foraging is now a huge part of what I do and, luckily, I am supported by many in the industry. Chefs, bartenders and catering companies started asking me about different ingredients they might be able to use. So it has sort of just snowballed and here we are!
So, you can forage for ingredients in your average neighbourhood park?
Yes. So many people are like, “You can forage in Ormeau? Really?” It’s so in-exotic to people. “But food is everywhere!”
When I take people for walks, they slowly begin to realise this. I talk about how parks are a great learning space. This is mostly because in parks you can get of a variety of environments and habitats such as woodland, meadows, water and all sorts of landscapes in one place not easily found in nature. You get different species of plants planted that you wouldn’t find near each other in the wild. I often find myself gravitating towards parks where I know I’m going to get a good mix of things and often a more successful haul. All my foraging classes are designed to be really accessible and my hope is that anyone attending can use that knowledge in their own local green space.
Tell us about foraging culture…
Foragers do have a ‘code’. Obviously, you’re not a very nice person if you come into Ormeau Park and take every single rose hip or every berry. You’re not only taking away from other foragers, but you’re also taking away from the birds and you’re interrupting the ecosystem.
I’m a member of the Association of Foragers and we always teach people to only take what they need and leave at least half of the product you’re picking behind. If you want to keep on foraging, you have to respect nature and its process or there won’t be anything left to forage. People don’t realise that if you take a plant away, there may be a host of species that rely on that plant that won’t be here next year.
The learning process and sharing with others…
As both a forager and a foraging guide, I am always learning. I still have a lot to learn about fungi, for example and it’ll be many years before I can call myself an expert. There are many species and a lot to know there and you do not want to be wrong about them because you’ll surely pay for it! Fungi are the deadliest organisms on the island, so it’s sensible to be cautious. But I do know enough to gather some mushrooms in season for myself. I hope that in a few years I will be confident enough to teach others.
I am always on a mission for other people to come and enjoy foraging. It’s great craic and it gets people outside, learning more about and interacting with nature. I feel it’s important to know where your food comes from and, through foraging, you can have a direct hand in making interesting seasonal dishes without visiting the supermarket. You can save money and use the freshest herbs available. I really feel it gives people a different level of respect and care for the things around them. It’s always great to hear people’s feedback and when they share what they’ve picked and how they’ve used different ingredients.
On knowing where your food comes from…
In my experience, people in the city are quite distant from the knowledge of our common plants and edible weeds – I was, too, up until I started really focusing on what was out there. It’s a big subject to get into, but I really feel like foraging should be an important part of engaging with the whole idea around using local and promoting seasonality and sustainability, while making the most of what we have.
In Ireland, there is a historical use of our native plants for both eating and cultural tradition and it would be really exciting to see these reintegrated into the average life of a person living in Northern Ireland. We are all used to the ease and good price we pay for our food, but it just doesn’t seem sustainable. Despite our immense agriculture in NI, farmers are becoming victims of convenience. All producers are getting squeezed – everybody wants good food, but few want to pay for it. It’s very difficult, as I think good food should be available to everyone at a cost they can afford, but there is a definite disconnect there because we are not connected to the food in the way people of the past would have been. But, really, there’s nothing cheaper than foraging!
How is it cooking with wild ingredients?
The approach to cooking does change a bit. It can be very labour intensive, I won’t lie. Things do sometimes require an extra bit of processing. That’s the biggest difference between cultivated and wild fruit. Wild fruit is unpredictable – it’s not grown for your convenience. Sometimes it will need to be transformed into something else in order to make it palatable. But, to me, that’s quite exciting.
I’ll often look at recipes that have a specific ingredient in them and I’ll do a ‘swap out’, replacing a cultivated ingredient with a wild one I just found. I think that’s a nice way to encourage other people to use different things and it really enhances dishes.
You can check out some of the dishes I’ve made on Instagram.
What are some of the best dishes you’ve made with wild ingredients?
I get really excited when I can use lots of wild greens in a dish. One of my favourites is kuku sabzi – it’s a Persian dish. It’s perfect for wild ingredients because it’s loaded with herbs and greens. You put your wild garlic, three-cornered leek, sorrel, yarrow, sea beet, dandelion and loads of other greens found along your journey. You chop them up very finely and mix them with some spices and eggs. It’s to die for!
A lot of ingredients work great with more familiar dishes, too. The traditional ingredient in champ was actually nettles. You can do many of the dishes we love, like boxties, potato cakes and dumplings with nettles and wild garlic. Sorrel works great with these dishes, too. Don’t forget veggie sausage rolls packed with wild greens. It can’t be beat!
How have you adapted over Covid-19?
That’s the curse of a freelancer. Of course you have the freedom, but you’re also subject to the market and world affairs and, unfortunately, this period hasn’t been fun. Sadly, I wasn’t able to do anything for about three months. Like many people, I just had to take the brunt of it.
On a positive note, once people were allowed to gather together again, it meant I could go back to offering socially distanced walks with small groups and they proved to be really popular straight away with lots of people excited to do an activity with their friends again. I’ve been keeping busy with these events since then. One thing about this difficult period is people are outside more and the demand and interest in local things has grown. I don’t think people really thought of parks as a social place prior to the pandemic, but we may see them used more widely moving forward.
How’s the business-side of foraging?
My role is mainly to teach groups how to forage and what to look for. I actually really enjoy sharing my knowledge and seeing people gain interest in the subject. A big portion of my income is taking groups out to different locations and showing them plants and herbs. We’ll forage for some ingredients and then I’ll cook or share something made from the wild ingredients at the end. This brings me great joy.
I also work with other organisations. I’ve worked with EastSide Partnership, the National Trust, Loveworks Cooperative and others and I’ve catered launches for different festivals using foraged ingredients. I work often with The Edible Flower, where we cater for weddings and events. Their food is incredibly good and we share many of the same philosophies. We’ll do pop-ups, supper clubs and classes together.
I love having the variety in what I’m doing and I’m quite lucky now that, with the connections I’ve made, I can more or less undertake the projects I’m passionate about and help build a shared community around local food and drink.
Do you feel there is a local food culture emerging?
Absolutely! I trained as a chef about 15 years ago which was a markedly different time for food in Belfast. It was either a greasy spoon or fine dining – with little in between. It has really transformed now and with loads of local markets popping up, interesting food ideas and more businesses focusing on local and small scale producers. That kind of high quality food with world class ingredients at an affordable price was unthinkable 10 years ago.
It’s getting better all the time and definitely there is now demand for high quality food with provenance, but I do think we’re a bit behind other parts of these islands. Places like Cork and Galway and many of the midsize cities over in Britain’s food scenes are really something. Eventually, Belfast will get there!
Should NI be proud of its food?
Absolutely! I think we are proud of lots of things that we make here already, but it’s the proliferation of smaller, tiny food businesses that we should be most proud of. Such as Mike Thompson’s Young Buck cheese, Broughgammon’s goat and veal, our small but growing number of organic farmers and our incredible bread makers like Justin Nichol of The Grateful Bread and Joe Trewellard of Bara Bakehouse. The emergence of local vendors and producers is something that can bind us together and has nothing to do with some of our darker days. There’s definitely a difference between what people grew up eating and what could actually be called ‘Irish food’. The good thing is, we can now make it what we want it to be!
What’s your message for the community at this time?
Go out, enjoy our amazing wild spaces and learn a little bit about the plants. Forage for blackberries and make something with your family. It’s nourishing in all ways, delicious and, of course, completely free.