Author: Roushanna Gray
There is flavour, food and medicine all around us. We just have to learn how to recognize it.
Based at the Good Hope Gardens Nursery in Cape Point, Veld and Sea offers seasonal and sustainable foraging classes, workshops and collaborative events for public and private groups, wild flavour cooking classes, corporate events and team builds, tour groups, wild flavour consultations, public talks, presentations and travelling foraging workshops.
Roushanna Gray founded this experience-based business in 2013. Outside teachers that are experts in their fields are hand-selected to lead their specialized workshops including Wild Beauty, Fermentation, Wildcrafting, Botanical Art, Botanical Cocktails, Mushroom Foraging, Medicinal Plants and Botanical Embroidery.
Veld and Sea are a positive, innovative, nature-inspired team committed to creating experiences that are adventurous, engaging, educational and delicious. On all of their seasonal wild food foraging workshops, they support and strive to teach sustainable, responsible and legal foraging practices.
Wild Greens Pesto Pasta
Ingredients:
Serves 4
- 3 tbsp. olive oil.
- 2 cups of wild greens (I used a mix of sea lettuce seaweed, wild garlic, nettles and basil).
- ½ cup of toasted sunflower seeds.
- 1 tsp of powdered cumin.
- 1 cup yogurt.
- 1 box Happy Earth People red lentil pasta.
- 1 cup of baby tomatoes.
- 1 sheet of nori.
- Edible flowers to garnish.
Method:
- Start by making the pesto – put the olive oil, greens, seeds and cumin into a food processor or blitz up with a hand blender until you have a blended pesto paste.
- Then get your pasta cooked – follow the easy instructions on the Happy Earth People box.
- Pour the cooked pasta into a big bowl, then gently stir in the pesto and the yoghurt. Spoon into serving bowls and top with tomatoes, nori and scatter with edible flowers.
- Enjoy!
“On land, at sea, in forests and mountains, there is food all around us, we just have to open up our senses and reconnect. To know what is edible and what is poisonous, how to identify, to learn what part of the plant to harvest and how to prepare are all important and valuable lessons to learn in sustainable and responsible foraging.”
Join Veld and Sea on their forages and track the edible landscape through the seasons on some wildly delicious adventures. From wild mushrooms to seaweeds and shellfish, edible weeds and flowers, to roots, shoots and more – every season has its own incredible flavour profile on offer.
About the author:
Founder of Veld and Sea, Roushanna Gray is a wild food innovator and avid forager. She teaches about indigenous edible foods through immersive experiences, connection and creativity. Inspired by the local edible indigenous plant availability, she has been experimenting with the exciting flavours and diversity of Fynbos and indigenous plants for over ten years. The wide range of delicious and nutritious culinary offerings from the beautiful inter-tidal rock pools along our coastline also play a major role in her cooking, classes and workshops. In 2019 she won the Spier Sustainability award at the Food XX and Eatout awards for her efforts to highlight South Africa’s local edible plant culture and to educate people on foraging as well as the Most Authentic African Experience award for recognition of excellence in the hospitality division by the Cape Town Experience Awards.