John Wright
Foraging & Feasting
- Regular price
- £95.00
- Sale price
- £95.00
- Regular price
Tax included.
Foraging expert John Wright, author of three River Cottage Handbooks about foraging, will take you on three forays: along the hedgerow, beside the seashore, and to the fields and woods hunting for mushrooms.
These are real forays, with all the hopes, disappointments, limitations of season and joys that we must expect when venturing into the wild for our dinner. They all take place in an autumnal Dorset, but the lessons learned here can be applied to other places and other times.
In John’s trusted and experienced hands, you will learn the basics of identification and understand how to forage successfully, responsibly and safely.
You'll learn:
- where to forage for foods
- how to identify your foraged finds
- foraging ethics and how to forage safely
- basics of wild mushroom and fungi identification
- recipes for your foraged food and drink
The course includes:
- 4 on-demand video lessons - presented by John Wright and River Cottage
- lifetime access to the videos, notes and interactive class
- flexible classes - join and learn when and where you like
- downloadable lesson notes
- practical foraging assignments and recipes (with tutor feedback available)
- access on your mobile, PC, Mac or laptop
- small interactive online classroom - chat online to students from around the world and share your creative ideas
Independent Cookery Schools Association approved
This course has been approved by the Independent Cookery Schools Association (ICSA), recognising the highest standards of training.
Time to complete the foraging course:
Every student is different but in general we think the whole course will take around 15 hours to complete including:
- Video lessons: 3 hours in total
- Course notes: 30 minutes per lesson
- Your foraging and foraged foods recipe assignments: at least 2 hours per lesson
- Interactive classroom time: 15 minutes per lesson
- Tutor feedback review (Expert level): 15 minutes per lesson
You'll need:
Your lesson notes will include the full details of the ingredients you'll need, but you will be making food from your foraged finds, so you'll need standard kitchen equipment.
Ready to get started?
Just add the course to your basket above - choose the 'Expert' option for personal feedback from John on your foraging assignments.
If you know someone who'd love this course then give it as a gift - just tick "This is a gift" at the checkout.
Any questions? Contact us by clicking on the orange speech symbol - we'd love to hear from you.
Lessons
What You’ll Learn
Explore the lessons and topics covered across the course.
The beautiful local Dorset hedgerows, woodlands and fields are full of wild food secrets, easily shared when you know what you are looking for and where to find them. This course is the perfect introduction to edible wild plants and you will learn where to forage and how to successfully identify your finds.
For the forager, the seashore holds limitless culinary potential. In this authoritative, entertaining and rather adventurous course, John Wright takes us on a trip to the seaside. In this lesson John will introduce you to the various species to be harvested, you will learn the practicalities such as conservation and the ethics of foraging; the importance of habitat; how to forage safely on the seashore; landing sizes; seasons; and equipment such as nets and crab pots.
In the lesson, John collects and describes the seashore species he finds on the day, complete with quite a few gratuitous but fascinating diversions. The species you will discover include some crustaceans (brown shrimp, common prawn and velvet swimming crab), plants (marsh samphire, shrubby seablite, sea purslane, sea rocket, spear-leaved orache); and seaweed (carragheen, dulse, gut weed, laver, sugar kelp, kelp).
With a passion for fungi spanning 50 years and a handful of books under his belt, John is one of the most experienced of all mushroom guides. During this lesson, in which he explores both pasture and woodland, John will introduce to you the fundamentals of mushroom identification, and explain where to look for various species and pass on numerous mushroom-hunting tips such has how to spot edible grassland species even when they are not yet there and the safest places to search. People are rightly concerned about collecting and eating wild fungi, so, in addition to the edible species he finds on the day, he will describe some of those that are poisonous so you can forage safely.
Although they are simply ingredients like any other, wild foods sometimes pose difficulties for the uninitiated: What can you possibly do with rosehips or hawthorn berries? How do you cook seaweeds? How can you preserve your wild mushrooms or four gallons of wild apple juice? John provides guidance in all these things and more, and will show you that a splendid meal can be made from the most unlikely of things.
COURSE TUTOR
John Wright
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Common Questions
Answers to the most common questions about learning with us.
Our online classroom is designed to help you learn from experts in a collaborative, social environment alongside a small group of learners.
Each lesson combines expert-led videos with optional assignments, giving you the opportunity to apply what you’ve learned and share your work with others. You can take part in ongoing discussions, ask questions, exchange feedback, and learn from a community of like-minded people from around the world.
By learning together in a small, supportive group, you benefit not only from expert guidance but also from shared ideas, perspectives, and experiences—helping you stay engaged and retain what you learn.
You can start your course at any time within 12 months of purchase. Once you begin, you’ll have lifetime access, so you can revisit lesson videos and notes whenever you like.
Courses are designed to fit around your schedule, allowing you to learn at your own pace. Each lesson video is typically 30–40 minutes, and we recommend around an hour for each assignment.
Both Peer and Expert options give you full access to the course content, including lesson videos, downloadable notes, assignments, and a collaborative online classroom with up to 20 learners. You’ll also have lifetime access to revisit the material at any time.
The Expert option includes everything in Peer, plus personalised assignment feedback, direct messaging with your expert tutor, and a certificate of completion.
With the Expert option, you can interact directly with your tutor throughout the course. You’ll typically have one week per lesson to ask questions and receive feedback on your assignments, with as much interaction as you need during that time.
Your tutor access begins when you enter the classroom and follows the course schedule (for example, a four-lesson course usually runs over four weeks). If you need more time or support, our team is here to help.
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