I'm just popping out for lunch
Today's culinary adventurers see the world as a giant cooking pot, says Sandra Lawrence
ADRIAN DANIEL and I are tramping deep into the woods of Hampstead Heath, North London. "We're after chicken-of-the-woods," says Adrian who, with his brother Michael, founded the Gate vegetarian restaurant in London. We peer into tree bark looking for the distinctive fungus. "One of the things I miss, being a vegetarian," Adrian says, "is chicken tandoori, and this fungus has a distinctly chicken taste. It's only an occasional find, but is well worth the effort."
The Daniel brothers are a dying breed of culinary hunter-gatherer. In an era when bastardised world cuisine is available on every corner and supermarkets make bland the most pungent of spices, there are still individuals who devote their lives to finding original foodstuffs; modern-day Marco Polos devoted to discovering exotic tastes and rare foods.
It was Edward IV who first recognised these swaggering gallants during his 15th-century reign when he created the Association of Merchant Venturers. Elizabeth I was a fan: Sir WaIter Raleigh was one of her favourites, bringing back potatoes and tobacco from his New World excursions.
"My first improvised meal was when I was working on a farm in Israel," Adrian says. The shops were closed for the weekend so he created something from vine leaves, mint and other "found" food, surprising the farmer on his return.
He doesn't make me walk blindfolded; as some would, but I am sworn to secrecy when we find a gnarled, dead oak sprouting ugly fungus. "This will be a special tonight," Adrian says, deftly cutting handfuls of the golden-yellow fungus, with its delicate peachy folds, and placing them carefully in a wicker basket. "These are impossible to cultivate. Our customers look forwards to this sort of thing, but they have to be flexible - you can never tell what you will find."
He spies some elderflowers in a hedgerow and wades through the nettles ("the blue nettle flowers are good in salads") to cut more goodies for his basket. We leave some edible-looking mushrooms under the tree - "No, you can't eat those" - then continue walking in a vain search for wild garlic.
Back at the restaurant, Adrian has barely put his basket down before his brother has his nose in it. The chicken-of-the-woods is proudly displayed, then pan-fried. It certainly tastes like chicken. "That'll fool a few people this evening," says Michael mischievously.
Mark Leatham is the Indiana Jones of the dried vegetable. He is well aware of his culinary ancestry - even evoking its spirit in the company name, Merchant Gourmet. "We had a Spanish cook who would create dishes from whatever I shot as a child - rabbits, pigeons, anything. I discovered that finding my own food was fun." Teenage years spent in Greece made him realise that Mediterranean food could be a delight.
After time in the Army, Leatham, by then selling surplus game to restaurateurs including Albert Roux, went to France and discovered a man in the Camargue who grew a new form of red rice. "But the way it was packaged made it look like birdseed," he says. Leatham repackaged it, and the rice is still a bestseller. He then began sourcing and importing sun-dried vegetables.
Leatham's voyages of discovery have taken him around the world. He never knows what he will find. ''I'll often look for one thing but find something else," he says. Once, while visiting Austria to hear the mating call of the Capercaillie grouse, he was served a dish with a dressing he had never tasted before. He liked the roast pumpkinseed oil so much he now imports it as part of a range.
He is often given strange foods to see if he will eat them. "I didn't much enjoy the live raw snail," he says, "and I didn't try the snake wine ... "
As the founder of Bigham's Global Gastronomy, Charlie Bigham has been influenced by cooking techniques he saw on his wanderings after leaving a "sensible" job to travel the world in a van.
"When I was working in the City, I detested convenience food - all those nasty microwave pre- cooked dishes full of additives," he says. "While I was travelling through India, I would stop by the roadside and have a wonderful meal cooked in a single pan, using fresh ingredients, which was ready to eat in a few minutes."
Inspired, Bigham returned to the UK and began experimenting with dishes that could be cooked at home using the single-pan techniques he witnessed. He came up with a series of ready-marinated meats, prepared vegetables and sauces, which could be prepared in the same time that it would take to reheat a takeaway. Harvey Nichols, Waitrose and Selfridges now stock his ranges.
Travel remains a big part of Bigham's life. "I had a fantastic dish at a traditional restaurant in Isfahan in central Iran, chicken with ground walnuts and pomegranate molasses," he says. "I wouldn't have stumbled upon that if I'd just been on the phone to a supplier."
