Fire and Wild (credit Daisy Saul)
Forage and Feast with Fire + Wild
Fire + Wild, which hosts off-grid outdoor dining with hyper-seasonal ingredients, fire-cooking and foraging experiences is a new client at The Dining Room. Run by chef and forager Mark Andrews, Fire + Wild is everything I want in a client - brave, interesting and most of all, delicious.
I went along for the recent Forage and Feast event on Ashdown Forest which started with a guided mushroom walk through the woods with mycologist Jesper Launder. We found over 100 mushroom varieties including 30 edibles such as porcini, hedgehog, parasols and amethyst deceivers. Despite the challenging weather conditions Mark and his team created a beautiful candlelit dining table under the trees with fire pits for warmth. After the forage we arrived at the forest camp for a glass of sloe gin fizz and wild canapés of gin-cured trout croustades and crispy rabbit bruschetta around the campfire.
Next followed a five course menu - wild mushroom butter with charred flatbreads, gorse-smoked scallops with wild boar bacon jam, squirrel and black chanterelle ragu with fried truffle gnocchi, wood pigeon with pickled blueberries and elderberry jus and grilled pears basted with brown butter served with mascarpone, hazelnut crumb and wood sorrel. Pudding was paired with an appropriately autumnal Sloe Gin Sour.
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Fire and Wild dinner at sunset (Daisy Saul)