Alexanders, ice cream, Sideshow Bob and the Spirit of Eden

Abundance: Tuesday 19 March 2024

Call me old fashioned, but I like to end the day as unpoisoned as I started it. So I take foraging very seriously. The main way I go about this is by not foraging very often¹. Occasionally my greedy stomach wins, even when I read that the treasure for which I am about to go in search can be mistaken for something that might do me a mischief.

At this time of year, Alexanders is everywhere in my patch of southwest England. You’ll find it in coastal areas², growing in great swathes along verges, cliffs, footpaths and on the edge of woods.

Everywhere the dog and I walk, a flush of its green leaves and yellow flowers greets us.

Known back in the day as the parsley of Alexandria, and much more part of our diet than it is now, Alexanders is a real foragers’ favourite. Every foraging bible tells you to beware of the other plants with which you might confuse Alexanders, for it is a mistake you are unlikely to repeat.

I am positive that what carpets the top of the cliffs is Alexanders, but still I check the books to be sure that the scent of the crushed stems - a peculiarly spicy fragrance - is as it should be, and that the leaves are indeed gently notched rather than the heavily incised leaves of the entirely less friendly hemlock.

I text an old pal who knows everything on such matters, and he reassures me that - given my photo and description - I am more likely to die crossing the road from the car to the cliff than from eating it. I am grateful to him, but feel he also has some duty here, as it was he who introduced me to Alexanders (see the recipe below) in the first place.

There are several rules I follow when foraging, chief among them is to take the dog. If you don’t have a dog, borrow one. In the mind of the casual observer, a dog turns a peeping Tom into a nature lover, a knife-wielding maniac into a considerate wild harvester, from someone to be avoided to someone to pass the time of day with.

A great deal of the plant is not only edible, it’s delicious (a distinction not made by every foraging book for every wild food). If I come back in a few weeks the flowers will be good; later still I can pick seeds to grind like pepper.

Today, I’ve brought a sharp knife wrapped in a tea towel - it’s these small details that prevent arrest: the part I’m interested in is the top 20cm or so - mostly leaves but with a good deal of stalky scaffolding. I leave them in a deep sinkful of water for an hour, shake them off and then set about making the ice cream below.

A couple of days after making the ice cream, my wife asked me to step into the garden. This isn’t usually a good sign. Often it necessitates an apology for me leaving the new fork out in the rain, perhaps a rake left - tines up - awaiting an unsuspecting foot and a subsequent rap on the nose; occasionally it might be to watch a woodpecker taking its breakfast from the creatures living in the grass. Today, she asks me if I know what the large plant living next to the not entirely dissimilar sweet cicely is. No idea, I say. That’s hemlock, she tells me, the very plant I was concerned about Alexanders not being.

I pull it up, with the aid of that fork I’d left out in the rain.

It is peculiar sobering to be in the company of something as everyday, and as seemingly benign, as a plant that would see the end of my life if I ate so much as half a dozen leaves of it. I’d have an hour or two to listen to my favourite album, eat as many spoonfuls of dauphinoise and trifle, and drink as many mojitos as possible, before the small matter of muscular paralysis, respiratory failure and death would draw a strong line under what until that point had been looking like an excellent end to the day.

What I’m struck by is just how very different the leaves of hemlock (above) look from Alexanders’ (below), and how once you have made a friend of one, it is only superficially mistakable for the other.

Both belong to the Apiaceae family - aka the umbellifers - to which celery, carrot and parsley are also part. The leaves of Alexanders look much more like large fleshy parsley leaves, and hemlock’s much more like carrots’.

So while I was out there in the wild, double and triple checking in an attempt to go to bed unpoisoned, the danger was only a few yards from my kitchen, quietly growing, partly hidden by the emerging deliciousness of other plants, its malign form blind to me by virtue of it being in a place I assumed was full of only the harmless and delicious.

Alexanders ice cream

I met Tim Maddams back in the early days of River Cottage - he was chef at the RC Axminster Stores and was involved in many of the events at RCHQ. He was quite the bolshy bastard at the time, which - I confess - I find fascinating in people. He also kept giving the game away that he was one of the very good guys, that his sensitive side was rather more pronounced than he might have liked to let on.

Quite a few years later, when life was not at its greatest, he showed up. As the old saying goes, when people show you who they are, believe them, and he did that in all the simple, positive ways I had no right to expect. And will never forget.

He put on a fabulous feast night for us at the old place, and dessert included Alexanders ice cream. Despite the farm being home to perhaps the greatest diversity of edible plants in the country, this one was a flavour I’d never tried.

Like a mulberry, it is hard to navigate accurately to its uniqueness via others, but the right ballpark is somewhere between rhubarb, parsley, cucumber and a distant unnameable spice. It’s really entirely unique and I love it.

This is Tim’s recipe - dictated in a series of Whatsapp voice notes in that mix of precision and feel you get from a chef - with exact proportions adjusted based (as Tim suggested) on tasting the warm ice cream, and with a little tweak of vanilla extract to soften the grassiness my own idea.

Thank you Tim.

12 or so 20cm long stems of Alexanders
5 egg yolks
140g brown sugar
500ml full fat milk
500ml double cream
½ tsp vanilla extract

Makes 1 litre

In a large pan, stir half the cream, half the milk and all of the sugar into each other over a moderate heat until the sugar has dissolved. Whisk the yolks together, then pour in, stirring constantly. Bring to a simmer and whisk as it thickens into a smooth custard. Stir in the vanilla extract.

Take off the heat.

Place the Alexanders in a blender, along with two ladlefuls of the warm custard and blend on high until smooth. Pour into a cold dish, stirring in the rest of the cold milk and cream to help cool it quickly.

Once room temperature, churn in an ice cream maker and freeze.

1. its likely origin is the Canary Islands, so the milder the better

2. at school, there was little more damning that being called a Saturday punk, implying you were square all week and your hair went vertical on a Friday night for two days. I am most definitely a Saturday forager, but an enthusiastic one nonetheless