Hog on the hob with a knob...

...of butter!

A green-winged orchid in a meadow of buttercups

With all this summer weather who could blame me for lolloping around in a wild-flower meadow taking photos of green-winged orchids, meadow buttercups and looking for tasty treats when I strayed too far from the ice-cream van. Thankfully the list of wild ingredients in my neural recipe book is growing week by week and the latest addition is in abundance right now - Hogweed.

Common Hogweed - the one you CAN eat

Gardeners amongst you will probably be thinking 'hang on a minute, isn't that poisonous?' Fear not my foraging friends it is Giant Hogweed (Heracleum mantegazzianum) to which we bestow this label of danger, plain old Hogweed (H. sphondylium) itself is delicious.

The young leaf shoots collected from a few different plants

The downward-pointing bristles on the
stems of this carrot family member

Giant Hogweed, as its Latin generic name suggests, can grow to truly epic proportions, often more than five metres tall. Look out for slightly pointier teeth on the leaves and purple/red spots on the hollow stem of the plant. It also produces a sap which contains psoralens, chemicals that change your skins sensitivity to light leaving you extremely vulnerable to the sun's UV radiation. People have experienced the effects of these nasty chemicals just by brushing past the leaves of the plant and have continued to be at the mercy of them for several years after initial exposure! If that wasn't scary enough type 'Giant Hogweed burns' in Google images... Oh, and these burns often don't appear for twenty four hours or so after contact, so just when you thought you were safe...

But if you're still keen on eating plain old Common Hogweed (also known as cow parsnip) then please take care. Common Hogweed seldom grows taller than two metres and has a green stem often with a dull red ridge running down the side rather than purple/red spots. However, these characteristics are not as helpful as one would hope because the best grub is picked from the young plants that are still less than one metre high.

Go for the young leaf shoots before the leaves have a chance to open fully. I like frying them up and making the unopened leaf go nice and crispy whilst the stem stays lovely and succulent like an asparagus spear.

Not only is Hogweed delicious but it is also known as the 'love plant', it contains chemicals that act as genital vasodilators! For centuries it has been used as a treatment for impotence, sterility and frigidty, just don't confuse it with Giant Hogweed.