Bramble and Dock Seed Foraging

Thanks to the amazing skills of local community foraging expert, Karin, we are especially excited for Autumn in Scotland. 

On a recent Tuesday morning, we were graced by bright sunshine and a stunning amount of brambles as we headed to a local foraging location for the day. Brambles are easily seen around the roadside at this time of the year.

Other than brambles, the group also stripped some dock seeds off of the stems and collected them into a paper bag, as we learned that we can also use the edible leaves for nettle stings. Dock seeds are equally common next to sidewalks. 

We always love improvising with the foraged ingredients. Since we picked two tupperware boxes of bramble, we split them between a savoury dish and a sweet dish. 

Led by the EFS community chef, we made some flatbread accompanied with cottage cheese, mixed berry vinegar, nettle seed pesto, and toasted dock seeds, followed by a bramble cobbler.

Pickled brambles were suggested as an additional way to preserve the berries. This would also go well with cottage cheese and toasted dock seeds mixed with some cumin. Toast docken seeds are also good on granola and crackers!

Dock seeds have a nutty flavour and are full of iron. It was so exciting to learn more about these natural, age-old ingredients that are lesser known to the average eater. It’s also a pleasure to cook with fresh, readily available ingredients that are free from processing. We took 5-10 minutes to toast the seeds on medium-high.

We put some cottage cheese into a blender and whipped it up, giving it a light fluffy texture. Its creamy signature flavour pairs perfectly with the cumin and dock seed mix.

Our foraging members were amazed at how easily flatbreads can be made. We can make some quick flatbreads with simple ingredients: yoghurt, flour, sugar, salt, oil and baking powder!

The docken seeds added some extra texture and flavours to the quick flatbread. EFS chef Andrew also suggested using the fresh nettle leaves to make a pesto-like paste to go with the flatbread with garlic oil. We all wished there was more nettle seed pesto as the mixture was so delicious after mixing the fresh leaves with the garlic oil. 

Cobbler is a dessert consisting of a fruit base and covered with a sweet biscuit-like top layer. Our members were so happy to discover how effortless cobbler can be made and bramble went fantastically well with the buttery base.

To make sure none of our foraged berries went to waste, chef Andrew taught the group how to preserve by making bramble jam.

It has always been a massive pleasure to have the foraging group in the Edinburgh Food Social kitchen and we hope to have one more cooking session together before the end of this year. We will look forward to the next session. Meanwhile, make sure to check out Karin’s foraging group in Craigmillar!