- [Narrator] This program made possible by Forest River.

We have always been dedicated to helping people experience the joy of the outdoors by building a full range of recreational vehicles.

At Forest River, your needs, interest and lifestyle are at the forefront of everything we do.

Forest River, Follow the River.

To learn more, visit ForestRiver.tv.

Oh, look at that.

See if I hadn't have sat down here I never would've noticed that a bird had walked by and lost bits of its down feather on a cut branch on this stump.

Well, that's definitely not anything risky, but the truth of the matter is that when you gather wild edible plants there are risks associated with that.

There are poisonous plants, there are plants that you shouldn't touch.

You don't know if you may have allergies.

Well, the reality is that you will not learn everything you need to know from this show.

The safe way to partake of the wild harvest is to learn from the books, go online and learn, but most importantly, connect with a local expert.

They will be passionate about teaching you everything from mushrooms, to plants, to trees and all the safe ways to enjoy the wild harvest.

(calm music) You can talk the talk, but you gotta walk the walk.

Like I consider myself a generalist when it comes to both survival and wild edible plants.

But when I wanna learn, I turn to a local foraging expert.

They're the ones who know the specifics of the plants in the area where you find yourself, and they can teach you how to help that particular species of plant that you're going after, live and thrive in that area.

Learning from a local master, that will increase your confidence in your own wild harvest.

(upbeat music) So this time around my local expert is Fiona Hamersley Chambers, an ethnobotanist who specializes in traditional plant foods.

Yeah, I like to up my game when it comes to my local pros, this is gonna be good.

Tell me what I'm looking at here.

[Fiona] These are salmonberries.

[Les] Yeah.

Rubus Spectabilis, which basically means a spectacular raspberry and they are called salmonberries in english because if you look at them, they look like a cluster.

[Les] Oh, like little salmon roe [Fiona] Like salmon roe.

[Les] Oh, so is this one that's also nicknamed Caviar berry.

[Fiona] I haven't heard that, but I think that would be logical.

Okay, that's just a local nickname, but again so often and you know this better than anybody, local common names versus the true reality of whether or not you can eat it...

It's like yeah, this is that berry here, but in California it's same name, but it's poisonous, right?

Things like that happen all the time.

Which is why it's really great to learn the latin names.

Right.

These are unusual though, you know what a ripe raspberry looks like, cause it's red.

But these ones, there are differences in individual plants, even though they're the same scientific name.

You can have ones that are dark purple or red or even yellow or even kind of a mottled bi color that are ripe.

[Les] They're all ripe at the same They're all ripe.

Yeah.

Paul's gonna love this, because he can play with the colors of this, but isn't that exciting within the one species you get all these different, beautiful colors.

This is primal.

(calm music) So happy with these, look at all these different colors.

Come to mama.

(calm music) Man.

Those look so fantastic.

[Paul] That Is a lot of berries.

I knew this was going to be wonderful to focus in on just the salmonberries.

Right?

So I'm really looking forward to what you do with this.

You will find that the flavor, unfortunately, for you as a chef is inconsistent.

There's a slightly different flavor I find to many of these berries, and I don't think it's necessarily associated with their color, it's just a thing.

Plant to plant maybe Maybe so.

Oh wow, so much flavor in that one kind of has a plum finish to it.

These are really unique.

I think what you'll find is they're quite juicy with a touch of tart, but still delicious.

So because we are here on Metchosin Farm, I thought, all right, what else can we do, What can we throw into the mix?

Now clearly we are surrounded by awesomeness.

Fiona's thing here is to try to save what there still is.

That's unique, that you can't just go and buy in a big box store, grocery store.

And this salmonberry has a story all of its own, I'm hoping you'll discover the culinary story in this but there's one other element I wanted to bring in.

Okay.

The big mound over there.

That thing?

That is ah, well, Fiona nicknamed it Salad Hill.

So basically our ingredients are the salmonberries and anything you can pick off of Salad Hill.

[Les] For Fiona aka the Forager Farmer from Metchosin Farm, the aptly named Salad Hill was a happy accident, while putting in some new infrastructure which included a small cement pad the excavator was piling up the dirt.

The last few scoops of dirt happened to be from where they had their chaff pile.

That's the dry plant material left behind after the seeds are removed through threshing.

Now normally they'd burn it.

But with the pandemic, the municipality stopped anyone burning a month early in 2020.

So with a lot of seeds in that soil the excavator basically planted them on the top surface of this huge dirt pile; lettuces, kale, chard, curly cress, radishes, cilantro, mizuna, mescaline and many other salad greens grew in profusion.

This is such a great idea to try at your own home.

There's so much stuff in here Paul, I don't know where to start with you.

We've probably got over 20 different seed crops in here.

There's lots of different kinds of brassicas, so radishes, kales, green curled lettuce, Yeah, everywhere I look, there's something else in here.

There's a whole tone of chamomile on the other side.

[Paul] It's a jackpot.

(laughing) (calm music) After being on Salad Hill, couple things that I realized tasting all these different greens that are growing there, is this magenta spreen.

Not only is it fun because it's colorful, but I think the flavor of it being so similar to spinach would lend itself perfectly to an omelette.

So that's my dish today, fresh salmonberries and honey and a spreen omelette.

All these berries are incredible, just fantastic.

As I'm celebrating the salmonberry, what I really wanna do is showcase it in its simplest form.

A little bit of honey, because I did realize yesterday there is a variance of flavor, some were tart, some were sweet and honey is just gonna bring it all together.

But how pure and how spectacular is a bowl of fresh picked beautifully ripe salmonberries.

When making a good omelet, the first thing is to realize that everyone has their own idea of what a good omelet is.

For me, a good omelet doesn't have a lot of color on the outside and if, if it's a perfect balance of pan versus fire versus heat the ultimate is zero color to the outside of an omelet.

With that being said, really it's all in the eye of the beholder.

(calm music) (shallots hissing) Ah, that's a good sound.

(shallots hissing) So as I'm cooking the shallots what I'm doing is just making them translucent.

For me, it's just a personal preference, lighter flavors not caramelized at all.

I love this color.

The salt.

How's that taste?

So good.

Now I'm just gonna wilt in the magenta colored leaves of the spreen.

Time to get the eggs ready.

Making an omelet is actually pretty easy.

One of the most important things to me starts with the quality of the egg.

These are Fiona's beautiful farm eggs, so I'm thrilled to have these to work with.

(spoon whisking) (calm music) Oh, I like the look of that.

Yeah.

Do you feel like an omelette?

Of course I'd like an omelet.

Oh beautiful.

Thank you.

[Les] Are this from Salad Hill?

They are, that's ah, magenta spreen, which is related to lambsquarters.

Oh, okay, cool.

Try it on something, like just grab a little piece outta the pan.

I love it.

Mmm, that's beautiful.

This is gonna be good, I can tell right now It's a simple dish.

Here we go.

And now I'm scrambling the egg, and shaking and stirring at the same time.

Now that the egg is almost fully cooked on the top I'm gonna roll it out on itself.

Here we go.

(calm music) All right.

About time Paul, I ordered breakfast a while ago.

Ha ha, well, here it is, at least it's nice and fresh.

All right.

Oh, look at that.

So eat the omelette first with the magenta spreen.

[Les] Okay.

And then those berries Les, they were just so amazing, I didn't want to do too much to them.

All I did was take the berries and a little bit of honey just to kind of sweeten up the whole thing so the flavor profile is maybe a little bit more even-keeled.

(calm music) This omelet Paul, is divine.

[Paul] Excellent.

So we're talking the magenta spreen, Right.

All right.

From Salad Hill.

[Paul] That's right.

Salad Hill is the coolest thing ever.

[Paul] You know how in the past you've spoken of option anxiety.

[Les] Yeah.

Yeah, I had it.

Wow.

Okay, you know what the omelet, spot on.

It's just, it's absolutely perfect.

But I wanna get to the berries, okay, here we go.

Mmm, oh my goodness.

It's kind of like, I've got quite a few flavors over here, Paul.

I've got your savory with the eggs which is just all mouth enveloping just goes in there and washes all the way right down to my tummy and I'm just like, yeah, there's satisfaction.

These berries are so inconsistent in their flavor that each spoonful is a little different than the last spoonful, which is crazy.

You figure it's just more the same more of the sweet goodness and the tart goodness of the berries but each one's a little bit different.

[Paul] Yeah.

In a wonderful way.

Well, for round one, Paul you just knocked it out of the park.

Salad Hill and the salmonberries with honey, yeah, A+ man.

(calm music) I'm thinking of having a salad, if I combine the berries with the typical vinaigrette profile flavor so oil, vinegar, sugar, but I'm gonna macerate them.

They're gonna actually create a textured salad dressing experience, which I think will be nice as a contrast with the kale.

And then I've got some rabbit, one thing that I've always wanted to do with rabbit is to deep fry it, kind of like a buttermilk fried chicken concept except buttermilk fried rabbit.

And one thing that I love with my fried chicken is a nice tangy sweet sauce, kind of like a honey mustard as far as the flavor profile but I want the salmonberries to be the star of the show and I think that would be a nice contrast to the salad, something hot, something crispy something juicy and something tangy; and it all should work together and really celebrate the salmonberry as well as Salad Hill.

So something that I'm always thinking about is celebrating the wild harvest, the wild ingredient.

And, I, I don't wanna overdo it, I don't want to add too much flavor and I don't want to take away from it by adding other components that dilute flavor.

So in this case a nice macerated berry-type dressing for the salad.

I think it's perfect.

A little honey, a touch of salt and then some beautiful cider vinegar.

(calm music) Stir that up.

See how the juice is now coming out of them, and that's gonna be the base for the vinaigrette, that's perfect.

Now what I am thinking here is a gastrique for the, the sauce for the rabbit.

Something that is sweet tangy and robust all in one.

I have so many wonderful berries to work with I can make a decent amount with that.

Cider vinegar, some white sugar and some heat.

All right, all I have to do is let that come to a simmer and thicken into a syrup.

(calm music) Salmonberry is a west coast species growing from Alaska to Northern California.

They're the first flowers to come out usually and so they indicate the start of spring.

They're also the first berries to ripen but you can eat the young shoots peel in the early spring as well, as one of the first greens.

Fiona spent some time teaching me the huge benefit of pruning wild plant species, such as these salmonberries to promote their growth and to combat several invasive species such as the Himalayan Blackberry.

(calm music) Domestic rabbits, get out of their cages and go feral here like in so many other places around the world.

And so local farmers sometimes need to cull them because they become invasive and damage gardens and crops.

Lucky for us, Fiona's two sons Hayden and Ben were able to procure a couple of rabbits for Paul's main dish.

- These rabbit legs are beautiful.

Sometimes you just have to get your fingers dirty.

That's what cooking's all about, great.

So right now the gastrique is a flavor bomb and I already have the texture of the seeds in the macerated salmonberry salad dressing.

So I'm taking the seeds out of the equation this way.

It's also just a little more refined.

Here we go, I think that's gonna stick to the rabbit, just the right amount, excellent.

Okay, time to cook the rabbit.

Now that's the right sound and then slowly drop that in.

(Oil sputtering) All right, these are looking just great.

Nice golden brown.

The thing I love about kale is how fun the shape is the stems are a little too much to eat in the salad so I'm just stripping off the tender leaves and there you go.

That's beautiful, so flavorful.

These radish sea pods are very sweet and juicy there's a little hint of that radish flavor but they're positively delicious.

Some of the kale, I could not resist got more of the magenta spreen, it's just so beautiful and so fun.

The macerated salmon berries and a little olive oil.

(calm music) [Les] That looks amazing.

[Fiona] I have never looked at my radish seed crop in the same way before.

That's right.

This is salad from Salad Hill.

[Fiona] It is.

Oh, wonderful.

[Paul] What you have in front of you is a buttermilk rabbit leg.

However, this isn't the story of the rabbit, this is the story of the salmonberry and the sauce is a gastrique, so a combination of the salmonberries, sugar and a salad is its own thing altogether.

[Les] Okay.

I'm going for it.

Hmm.

Interesting.

That is incredibly sweet.

You know, sweet and sour sauce that's what you made, but there's a clarity, a texture to it, that's not, you know, gunky sweet sort of thing.

It's very, ah, you did not have to work at this to make it sweet, that's for sure.

Fiona, what are you thinking so far, what, how you're, um I mean you actually, you finished your salad already, so tell me what your palates discovered on both journeys.

I've eaten salmonberries my whole life and I've never actually thought about putting them in a salad before, especially with whatever the vinaigrette was that you made for that.

It is a perfect mix of kind of the dark leafy green intensity and the, the sort of tanginess of the salmonberry with a little bit of a zing and sweetness.

So really nice, great sort of balance, and like you Les, I'm surprised it's quite a different sauce that you've made for the rabbit yet it's the same berry.

Mmhm, I'm getting two completely different experiences between the salmonberry, for the salad and the salmonberry for the rabbit.

I love them both, for the rabbit, I'll be honest it doesn't speak to me of anything special.

It just is simply a sweet and sour sauce, now to your credit, I think you manipulated the sauce beautifully in terms of using the salmonberry, but I don't, like you could have said this was a sweet and sour sauce with raspberry or blueberries or straw-, it would, I'm not, you know I'm not feeling the salmonberry in the sweet and sour sauce.

What do you think?

When I look at this and when I made it and when I tasted it, I didn't think salmonberry although it's the same ingredients as in the salad minus the, the greens, I thought rosehip.

Interesting.

More so, like it has a rose hip texture, [Les] Yup.

And a rose hip color, sometimes ingredients are just so special on their own and the magic moment of when you pull them off the plant, is that sweet spot but it's that moment you can't improve on.

And that's the hardest thing to capture.

I didn't really anticipate that the flavor would become generic at all knowing how they tasted when they were fresh.

Still delicious.

[Paul] Yeah.

Again, as always and so often with you and I, like it's like, well, it's really delicious but did it speak of the wild ingredient which, of which we harvested, and I wanna say right now that on the salad a hundred percent knocked it outta the park.

On the sauce for the rabbit, not so much.

Delicious, but doesn't speak so much of the salmonberry.

[Paul] Yeah, yeah, I agree.

And that's why it's fun to have enough to do both, to experiment.

You know what, cheers, this was just one of- Fiona, thank you so much for being a part of this whole experiment and for your farm, Metchosin Farms, which is just, it's really truly a wonderful experience to stroll around that yard and see everything that you've got going there.

And knowing that we can combine it with all of this, what people would call wild foods and weeds sort of thing, so thank you very much for that.

Cheers.

[Fiona] It's been a pleasure, Paul thank you.

[Paul] Cheers, Thank you You know, it would seem that local foraging is becoming quite a big thing, especially with the thought process that you can take all of these wild gathered ingredients, use only them and create a meal.

Now, while that is incredibly rewarding to do it's just as equally challenging, in fact, it can be quite difficult, and I think the magic is in blending the old with the new, we have tens of thousands of years of tradition and history through the DNA, the ancestry of every single living human being.

And we can learn from that, but we can combine it with modern equipment, modern techniques and yes even modern cuisine.

The result of that, an incredibly satisfying, unique and absolutely delicious wild harvest.

(upbeat music) If you'd like to continue the wild harvest with me and chef Paul Rogalski, then please check out our website at wildharvestfilms.com where we have recipes and foraging tips along with deleted scenes and outtakes from the making of Les Stroud's Wild Harvest.

Directly inspired by the series Chef Paul and expert forager Les Stroud bring you the Wild Harvest season two recipe book highlighting all of Paul's dishes and complete with behind the scenes stories.

It is available for $29.99.

In addition, a DVD of this season is also available for $19.99.

To order, please go to wildharvestfilms.com Wild Harvest TV Show on Facebook or Les Stroud's Wild Harvest on YouTube.

[Narrator] This program made possible by Forest River.

We have always been dedicated to helping people experience the joy of the outdoors by building a full range of recreational vehicles at Forest River your needs interest and lifestyle are at the forefront of everything we do.

Forest River, Follow the River.

To learn more, visit ForestRiver.tv.

(upbeat music)