Fat Hen - The Wild Cookery School

10/12/2025

Bids are open for a private foraging walk for four people to support PZN Youth this Christmas….

Our online auction is live until 16th December.
We have some incredible donations which you can bid on from amazing local donors to support our youth venue offering a safe space for young people in Penzance and Newlyn. You can bag some great gifts at bargain prices whilst supporting our cause!
Please take a look and share :)

https://www.zeffy.com/en-GB/ticketing/pzn-youth-cics-silent-auction

09/03/2025

21/10/2024

🌊 Home spa alert ‼️

🌊 The fun and games doesn’t end on the seashore or the dinner plate….

🌊 Mondays are my home spa day…. I made the best decision ever not to work on Mondays and instead I take my time to have a slow morning and some seaweed fun.

🌊 Here’s my triple seaweed home spa treatment…. Serrated wrack for the bath and my hair, kelp (oarweed) for my eye mask and carragheen gel with this morning’s coffee grounds for my face….

🌊 I subscribe to the theory that whatever you put on your skin you should be prepared to eat and everything here is wonderfully edible.

🌊 All the gorgeous minerals and moisturising alginates are absorbed by the skin and the seaweed also draws impurities from the body.

🌊 I feel amazing and start the week like superwoman.

🌊 If anyone wants to come and have a home spa here on a Monday send me a DM… it’ll only cost you a fiver but you might have to share my bath water… 🤣🤣🤣🤣

19/10/2024

🌊 Thanks to everyone who came on my seaweed course today. Great to see you again . We were sooooo lucky with the weather…. What a blinder 🌞 ☀️🌞…. and thankyou to for the stunning venue, Trewartha Barn,

🌊 That’s the end of my courses for this year. I’m still available through the winter for private foraging walks so do get in touch if you fancy braving some winter foraging. You would be surprised how much you can still pick all through the dark months! We are so lucky in west cornwall with the mild weather…. Seaweeds, salads, herbs and vegetables are still plentiful….

🌊I’ll be setting my calendar for 2025 in the next month so please keep an eye on the website for next year’s courses. Events are continually evolving and I’ve got some new ideas in the pipeline.

🌊 Thanks to everyone who has joined me this year. As always it’s been a pleasure to meet you all and I’ll look forward to more of the same next year.

🌊. If you’re planning a trip to Cornwall and have specific dates and want to do a course while you’re here, now is the time to let me know and I will try and include those dates in the calendar.

🌊 Enjoy the rest of the autumn 🍂 and happy foraging 😁…

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28/09/2024

🥕 I’ve been cooking all week for my Swiss friend for a retreat she’s been running down in Lamorna Cove.

🥕 It’s been a fantastic week and I’ve loved cooking for people who have appreciated and enjoyed my food.

🥕 There have been lots of wild greens and seaweeds on the menu this week alongside local seasonal ingredients.

🥕 I didn’t get many pics of the actual dishes but these photos give a flavour of the ingredients and some of the side dishes and puddings!

🥕 We’ve eaten

🌱 braised alexanders with rosemary and olives,
🌱nettle risotto,
🌱 Pan fried polenta with wild greens
🌱wild green spanikopita with mallow, nettle, sea beet and sea cabbage,
🌱sides of wild greens with lemon, garlic and olive oil,
🌱pickled carrot salad with navelwort,
🌱chickpea salad with mallow and sea radish,
🌱pan fried mackerel with wild salsa verde, rock samphire fritters and crispy gutweed,
🌱mackerel pate with home made ponzu & Asian slaw
🌱lots of local vegetables and salads and we finished with a traditional roast which they were keen to try last night… I basically made my Christmas dinner for them with all the trimmings: slow roast shoulder of lamb, spiced red cabbage, cauliflower cheese, roast potatoes, roast parsnips and carrots with thyme and honey, creamed swede and buttered leeks…. Followed by poached pears with cardamom syrup and local

It’s been fun and I’ve found my joy in the kitchen again.

11/09/2024

🌱 Another great day on our Forage and Feast Day.

🌱 These days always attract such lovely people. I thoroughly enjoyed hanging out with you all today. Thank you for coming.

🌱 We only had a couple of very light showers and then sunshine at the end….. somehow in all the years I’ve been doing these days we manage to avoid the rain….. hope I’m not jinxing it by saying that….😄.

🌱 The food was fantastic as usual. Big thanks to chef Max Wilson and his brilliant team . I love the nettle orzo risotto with rosary goats cheese and smoked almonds…. It’s totally delicious.

🌱The next day on Oct 9th is fully booked but new dates for 2025 will be confirmed by November…. So keep an eye on the website and I’ll let you know when they’ve been planned. It makes a great Christmas present!

🌱 Happy Autumn 🍂 foraging. For those who came, what was your favourite dish today?

10/09/2024

04/08/2024

What do I love about nature?

It’s seemingly haphazard imperfect perfection

Repeating patterns

Symmetry

Tones, textures, colours

Shapes

Constantly evolving and changing

Life-and-death

Bold-and-retiring

Fanfare

Vibrant and subdued

It is everything

And every walk is a joy……

🌿🌳🌿🌳🌿🌳🌿🌳🌿🌳🌿🌳

Please note not all these plants are edible. Today was purely observing nature, not eating it 😁

25/07/2024

🌿 It’s the this weekend up on the banks of the River Camel in St Minver, Wadebridge.

🌿 I’ll be leading three foraging walks on the most amazing salt marsh full of edible greens 🥬 which are in their prime right now.

🌿 Come and join me for foraging at 4.30pm-5.30pm Friday, Saturday and Sunday afternoons.

🌿 We’ll be foraging for marsh samphire, sea purslane, sea arrow grass, frosted orache, rock samphire and many more.

🌿 Hope to see some of you there.

,

12/07/2024

❤️ I drove down the track from Boscawen-noon for the very last time this morning. I’ve said goodbye to the barns, my family home of 20 years, the place where fat hen was dreamt up, the place where two of my children were born (yes quite literally Jed and Sam were both born in a barn 😁). I’d wanted Ella .daveyy to be born there too but she was a bit hasty and came three weeks early whilst visiting my mum in Cheltenham. I think she was far too refined to be born in a barn and fancied herself as a Cheltenham lady, not a Cornish pixie 🤣

❤️ It’s the end of an era and I know this place has been so much to so many people. It came alive when it was full of people and we certainly knew how to create some great gatherings. From parties to foraging courses, stone circle ceremonies, extended family christmases, a retreat for friends at times of need, a place for volunteers to immerse themselves in west cornwall, for visitors seeking the windswept ancient landscape of Penwith. It has seen blood, sweat and tears over these 20 years, a beautiful and rugged place created from three derelict barns and a paddock. Now it’s time to say good bye and good luck to the new family who I hope will be very happy here.

❤️ I used to love this view as I drove down the 1/2 mile pot holed farm track, just before turning the bend, the field framed by the two hedges and the gateway.

❤️ Time for new adventures and new beginnings.

❤️ Thank you to everyone who spent time with us there and our beautiful collie, Molly, who is buried there. ❤️❤️❤️❤️❤️❤️❤️❤️❤️❤️❤️❤️❤️❤️❤️❤️❤️❤️❤️❤️

11/07/2024

🫐Well that was a cracking day yesterday on our forage, feast and wild spa day .

🫐 It was such a pleasure working with on this event and I can’t wait to get cooking on some future collaborations. It’s rare to find a chef who loves wild food as much as I do and who is so naturally creative with the ingredients. It’s so easy to get stuck in your ways and so good to have inspiration from others. Thanks for all your help and new ideas.

🫐 On the menu yesterday we had:

Seaweed and miso soup

Asian style glass noodle salad with estuary greens (sea purslane, sea aster and marsh samphire

Dulse tortilla

Home smoked mackerel with cucumber 🥒 and rock samphire pickle

Venison with pickled red cabbage, watercress, orange and almond

Nasturtium wraps with veg, tofu and almond satay

Mugwort and red onion focaccia & seaweed and sesame focaccia

Seed and seaweed gluten free bread

Sushi urimaki with home made furikake

Gooseberry and meadowsweet eton mess with red clover and wood sorrel.

😋😋😋