Slow Food Mother City » foraging

Veldkos Foraging at Oep ve Koep in Paternoster

Pia — Tue, 11 Oct 2011 10:08:14 +0000

At the end of August, a small group of Slow Food Mother City members and enthusiasts travelled out to Paternoster for our Veldkos Forage and Lunch at Oep ve Koep.

It was a perfect, sunny day, and we all had a wonderful time. We’ve posted new photos in our gallery – have a look!

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And, the following are excerpts taken from two bloggers who came along with us and wrote about their experiences:

Food and the Fabulous – www.foodandthefabulous.com

A few Sundays ago, on the 28th of August, we headed off to Paternoster, a sleepy fishing village on the Cape West Coast just under two hours outside Cape Town to join Slow Food Mother City on a food forage in the local nature reserve in TietiesBaai (yes, you read the name correctly.)

What is Food Foraging?

Searching for wild plants, indigenous to an area for consumption, is as old as mankind. In the last decade, there has been a conscious reactivation of interest in foraging from dedicated foargers, freegans, chefs and curious individuals (like myself).

The closest I’ve come to foraging (apart from hopping from one stall holder to the next at some of the world’s loveliest farmer’s markets) is picking herbs and chilies from our garden. Though there were the times we picked mulberries and unripe guavas (worst tummy ache known to man) along the roadside walking home from school….

Cape Columbine Nature Reserve

Rupert, a botanist and friend of Kobus van der Merwe (Chef at Oep ve Koep, a family run business) guided us, a group of 20 through a small section of the Cape Columbine Nature Reserve, mere minutes out of the village. The reserve is unusual in that it is flanked by coastline, dotted with coves and covered in fynbos, succulents and wild flowers in season…

Oep Ve Koep

Kobus looks much younger than I expected and runs through the menu in his gentle, soft spoken manner, his eyes beaming as he brings out plates of food starkly in contrast with the modest surroundings. We start with bokkum (salted, dried fish) butter and a pickled waterblommetjie followed by a calamari bobotie (egg custard savoury crustless pie) with soutslaai. The main of sandveld potato dumplings, dune spinach, veldkool, soy butter, porcini and nasturtium is my favourite dish of the lunch.

Read more, and view Ishay’s fantastic photos here.

Cape Town By Mouth - www.capetownbymouth.com

Veldkos Ramble and Lunch at Oep ve Koep

Last weekend was just perfect. Sunshine, culinary treats and a trip to Paternoster, a foodie fishing village on the west coast. If you have read some of my blogposts you may already know that I love to forage (read about mushrooms here). Foraging is something that we grow up doing in Finland and it has even become somewhat of a trend spearheaded by Rene Redzepi from Noma in Copenhagen. I have hardly been able to contain myself since I first heard about Slowfood’s Veldkos ramble. The Cape Floral Kingdom is the smallest yet richest in the world and I have been dying to learn about local wild food.

20 slowfoodies pitched up at 11am on Sunday morning at Oep ve Koep in Paternoster and headed out to the veld with the enthusiastic, knowledgeable and very entertaining Rupert from Cape Nature.

We learned to identify sout slaai and veldkool (salty salad and field cabbage) as well as a prickly relative of asparagus that I can’t remember the name of (my brain switches off when plants are not highly tasty). Rupert also helped me identify sorrel. I have been happily eating it in Finland before (we call it fox bread) and some wild food enthusiasts use it in salads. Sorrel has crept into my salad pots uninvited in Cape Town and I have ignored it unsure of its edibility. I shall make sure it feels welcome from now on.

…

Lunch at Oep ve koep was an absolute treat. Kobus van de Merwe uses a lot of wild herbs and plants in his cooking. We started with bokkom butter and bread and a lightly pickled waterblommetjie. So pleased to see waterblommetjies outside of stews. These treats were followed by calamari bobotie, which was complemented by seaweed. Our palates were cleansed with pickled onion and salvia (sage related herb) soup poured from an enamel teapot. The main course was a highlight: potato dumplings with field cabbage and some dune spinach. Oep ve Koep is well worth a visit. Kobuses beautiful yet down to earth cooking is served in a cozy courtyard with missmatched tables and rambling herb bushes. His Sardines on Toast blog will have you salivating and planning a trip to Paternoster.

Read more, and view Marianna’s lovely photos here.

Slow Food Foraging Series: Chestnuts at Glendirk Farm

Pia — Mon, 07 Mar 2011 09:10:47 +0000

**UPDATE: Event postponed to Sunday 27 March 2011 (nature isn’t playing along, and there are no chestnuts to be gathered!). The event is already fully booked, but if you’d like to join the waiting list, please email events@slowfoodmothercity.co.za**

On Sunday, 13 March 2011 27 March 2011, we will be visiting beautiful Glendirk Farm, one of the few remaining private farms in Constantia, to collect fallen sweet chestnuts from their grove of chestnut trees. You can take home whatever you harvest, and children are especially welcome.

TIME: 10.30am

LOCATION: By the gate of Glendirk Farm, next to the entrance to Chart Farm, Wynberg (we will send directions closer to the time). For security reasons, we must all drive into the farm together, but you can leave whenever you wish.

COST: R20.00 per adult, children are free. This admin fee contributes towards the running costs of Slow Food Mother City. This is payable in cash on the day.

NOTES: Please wear strong shoes (such as hiking boots) as chestnut husks are prickly, and shoes are useful for splitting any unopened husks on the ground. Please bring baskets or plastic bags for holding your chestnuts.

To RSVP, please click here.

Fungi Foray

Michelle Matthews — Sat, 26 Jun 2010 18:08:58 +0000

Father’s Day dawned gloriously with perfect mushrooming weather – a crisp, clear morning after half a week of soaking rains. More than thirty slowfooders of all ages joined us to forage for fungi at the Tokai Arboretum in Cape Town’s Southern Suburbs. We were lead by the knowledgeable Dr Nicky Allsopp, who has a background in ecology and plant ecophysiology, and is a mushroom expert and enthusiast.

Dr Nicky Allsopp tells us that pretty much all of these mushrooms are inedible...

Instead of simply searching for mushrooms to eat, we were dispatched to go and find samples of as many different mushrooms as we could, which we would then bring back to Nicky for identification. The Arboretum is the perfect place to find a variety of fungi – it was established as a nursery to test the viability of various trees in our climate. The saplings that were planted were usually brought from overseas in the clump of soil they were growing in, soil full of different spores.

Exciting finds for kids of all ages!

Off we tramped into the forest… Some people were lucky within minutes; some got competitive; some wandered aimlessly, questioning their eyesight; others became engrossed in one mushroom through their camera lenses; and a few ran wild, screaming “Mushrooms! Mushrooms!” (the little ones, you’ll be relieved to know).

Look sharp - it can be easy to miss perfect specimens

We brought back a wide range of fungi, ranging in colour from bright orange to purple to white; in shape from “Smurf houses” to flat-topped to puffballs. The truth is, mushrooming is not for sissies. Quite a few were poisonous, with effects ranging from hallucinations to vomiting to liquefying of internal organs (hmmmm…). Books can help you identify these toadstool terrors. If you find a copy of this pick it up, it’s a classic:

RandomHouseStruik publishers will be releasing a new Pocket Guide to Mushrooms that will cover about 100 species in late 2010.

White gills - be afraid...

Tips for newbies: In the Western Cape, most mushrooms with white gills are poisonous. Also look out for a ‘veil’ on the stem and large bulge at the root of the stem – also signs that a mushroom is probably toxic.

Rainbow fungi nation!

A few were not poisonous, but not nice to eat, such as the purple-topped russula. Porcupines love it, but the few people who dared to taste a sliver of russula-gill declared it “more hectic than wasabi”!

Yum! Yes, you can eat pine rings.

However, a couple of Tokai mushrooms are delicious to eat. The porcinis (also called ceps or boletus) with their easily identifiable yellow spongy pores (instead of gills) and the orange pine rings with their distinctive green patina and indents on the stem, are the two most common. The best way to eat them, as with most mushrooms, is to slice them, fry them in some butter (maybe with some garlic and a few herbs), season them and eat them on toast. Their meaty umami flavor also goes well with the buttery nuttiness of avocado, also in season in June.

Mushroom soup - hot from the boot!

We rounded off an informative and invigorating morning with mushroom soup served in the parking lot. (Hot boxes are awesome, by the way.) Slowfooders loved the day. Alice and Pat said: “Many thanks for organising such an enjoyable fungal foray today! We just loved it, and the good company.”

Mushrooming meets high fashion

And, as Slow Food Mother City committee member Pia Taylor points out on her blog post on the event: “As long as those who forage do so without having to take everything all at once (or destroying the things they don’t like), we should (in theory) be able to share this incredible natural resource indefinitely.” That’s truly sustainable eating.

If you’d like Dr Nicky Allsopp to help you identify a mushroom you’ve found, e-mail a photo of it to her.

Mushroom soup recipe

Serves 4

25g butter
1 large leek, white part only, sliced
400g brown and/or Portobello mushrooms, chopped
2 tbls flour (or brown lentils)
100ml red wine, sherry or brandy
Squeeze of lemon juice (about ¼ of a lemon)
½ tsp dried thyme and/or rosemary
10g dried porcini mushrooms, soaked in 250ml warm water
750ml vegetable stock
Salt and pepper
50ml sour cream (optional)

1. Soak the dried porcini mushrooms in 250ml warm water for about half an hour.
2. Fry the leek gently in the butter until soft, then add the mushrooms and allow to cook down for a few minutes.
3. Add the flour. You can also use brown lentils to thicken the soup, and they’ll enhance the mushrooms’ nutty flavor.
4. Add the booze and cook for a few minutes to evaporate the alcohol.
5. Add a large squeeze of lemon and the herbs, and stir for a minute or two, then add the porcini mushrooms with their liquid.
6. Add the stock, bring soup to the boil, turn the heat down, and then simmer for 20 minutes.
7. Take the soup off the heat, puree until smooth and season with salt and pepper.
8. Stir in the cream, if using (you can also substitute milk for some of the stock if you want a creamier soup). Gently reheat the soup. Serve with buttered seed bread.

A ruffled mushroom (not poisonous!) popping up from the leaf litter