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I love Middle Eastern food in all shapes and forms. Nothing satisfies me more than tucking into a mezze platter of falafels, domla (or dolmades), homous, olives and pita bread served up on a bed of salad leaves with perhaps a salsa dipping sauce on the side.

However, nearly all the ingredients have to be flown in from half way across the world as none of them are really suited to grow in the UK’s climate.

I’ve been experimenting with wild food for sometime now, coming up with different dishes using food I’d picked just a stones throw from my home. However I only put two and two together recently and realised I’d actually made all the food on a mezze platter using UK ingredients. The only thing I’m yet to try is the ‘olives’ made from unripe sloes and it’s too late this year to find unripe ones.  I have however made a very acceptable caper from nasturtium buds, and I hear you can do the same with daisy buds (Bellis perennis)

So lets begin with the substitutions before I go into the recipes.

  • Chickpeas – boiled chestnuts
  • Seasame seeds (tahini) – hazelnuts or
  • Vine leaves – Dock leaves (boiled twice and drained), charlock, Hedge garlic, lime leaves etc, etc
  • Olives – unripe sloes
  • Tomatoes for salsa – haw berries.
  • Lemon juice – Sumac berries

Homus

  1. Peel two handfuls chestnuts, and then crack about a palm full of hazelnuts.
  2. Boil them together until both are soft in just enough water to cover them
  3. Drain reserving the water
  4. Blend the two together, using a hand-held blender, slowly adding the water as you do so.
  5. Add a little oil and some spices if you feel it needs it, you can use sumac, toasted hogweed seeds and beech oil.

Dock Dolmades or Dolma

  1. Boil the dock in two changes of water, discarding the water each time.
  2. Fill each leaf with a teaspoon of cooked barley flavoured with mint, dried sumac and thyme.

Haw Salsa

  1. Boil two handfuls of haw-berries in just enough red wine vinegar to cover them (could use cider vinegar) along with some spices of your choice (chilli, crushed coriander seed etc)
  2. Strain through a sieve and serve

Falafels

  1. Boil up some peeled chestnuts
  2. Strain and pat dry (the water can be used to make a nut stock or gravy)
  3. Use a blender or potato masher to crush them to a pulp.
  4. Work into falafel shapes with your hands and fry until browned on the outside

Olives

  1. Take a number of unripe sloes and leave in brine solution for one to two weeks depending on when you remember they’re there
  2. Place in a sterilized jar, cover with vinegar, seal and leave
  3. That’s it

Serve it all with pita bread and seasonal leaves (i.e. chickweed, wintercress, sorrel in the autumn/winter)