Flavour Fred

“My surname is anglicised from Friedenhain, which translates to peaceful Grove. I have become interested of late in traditional Jewish cuisine and what my dad’s side of the family would have been eating. I equally take inspiration from other cultures’ cuisines and try to find wild flavours locally that I can substitute.”

Was food and nature a big part of your life growing up?

George. I went to Verulam School in St Albans, where I grew up. My interest in what I could gather and make things out of started relatively young. I have memories of picking blackberries with my nan, which was quite common. She was from Shaw, just outside Rochdale, and had a sweet shop.

I’m one of five kids, and my dad is a very keen gardener. From very early on, pocket money would be earned by digging a pit for an asparagus bed, or I’d be painting the shed and stuff like that. So, I’ve always had my hands in the dirt, so to speak.

Learning to cook came from the very homely cooking my mum made for all seven of us growing up. It was perfect, homey, and included a lot of homegrown stuff from the garden. It was tasty, simple stuff, probably out of a Delia Smith book from up on the shelves.

I followed the standard path through school and education but never figured out what I wanted to study or learn about. So, I didn’t do well at my A-levels, which led me to a corporate job in IT. I was pretty good at engaging with people and became a salesperson at that company.

After about five years, it felt like my head would implode one day. In contrast, I’d spend my weekends gathering things and making jams and chutneys in the woods. So, I decided to follow that route after being unemployed for six months.

So, you decided to create a job out of your interests?

George. I started gathering interesting ingredients, making ferments, brownies, and pickles, and selling them at markets. I had market stalls in St Albans, Broadway Market in Hackney and one in Spitalfields, in the East End.

I was selling bread, and I’d often make sandwiches out of that bread, too. A regular customer who came to buy my sandwiches was a friend of a friend. He had a pub that wasn’t working for him, so he shut it down. One thing led to another, and my market stalls turned into a little pub in the cathedral quarter in St Albans called The Verulam Arms.

My brother’s schoolmate (soon to be his wife), I met her father, Gerald, an ex-businessman and baker. We started a pub together in 2009 called The Foragers at The Verulam Arms.

We ran that for around ten years. The idea was always simple, based on responsibility and respectfulness of nature. We were engaging with the history around where flavour came from and the origin of ingredients. Like the ancient grains in Gerald’s bakes, foraging stuff, manageable bits and pieces on the menu, and various types of game from the surrounding farmland.

I loved it there. It was a real, quirky, edgy place where we made everything, and I enjoyed showing people what was possible. On the bar, we’d often have different spirits with infusions of blackberries soaked in brandy, sloe gins, and horseradish vodka for the Bloody Marys. Eventually, we moved into brewing, too.

The dishes were straightforward, too; we’d still use potatoes and garlic and all that stuff. We weren’t complete purists like some strict foragers out there.

My interest in foraging came out of my time at the pub. I remember making apple and blackberry pies and learning about different ingredients. Gerald knew his stuff, and I found comfort in being outdoors and connecting with everything. I was travelling, trying other ingredients and dishes, and this was the time of supper clubs, so I was learning bits from everywhere.

We were learning everything we could but taking no risks with the foraging. We kept it simple: nettles, goosegrass and didn’t go into the wild mushrooms over the first few years. We brought in a guy called Kevan Palmer, who was working for a company called Woodland Ways, a survivalist bushcraft kind of company. One Saturday a month, we’d do a foraging course led by Kevan, and the Chef and I delivered the food. We were getting more engaged with the food and the wild flavours.

I became more involved in the kitchen, starting with pie mix fillings and chutneys and then doing a few bits to help the Chef. Then, I got to the stage where I could cover shifts, so I learned from someone who was a very good Chef.

The Chef at The Foragers sadly walked out of the kitchen and job when I asked him to do something special for the Mayor when they came. That night, I started cooking in the restaurant, my baptism of fire. I had a full restaurant, easily the worst night of my life.

The next day, we redid the menu with stews, pies, an excellent burger, a good vegetarian dish, a good fish dish, and sticky toffee pudding with wild fruits. That was the turning point for me, where I started to develop things I could then dress up dishes with what I’d been making: salts, rubs, ferments, syrups, bread, bakes, wild infusions, and drinks. We brought a new guy into the kitchen, and I started to focus on and learn more about the foraging side.

By now, Kevan had moved on, and Richard joined us. He is a creative writer who knows his stuff and is fascinated by mushrooms. Then, he and I started leading the foraging walks together. Richard would go deep into the history, folklore and all that stuff. And then, I would chime in terms of how we would use the ingredient in the dishes. The walks would end at the pub, where we’d make and serve those dishes. That’s where it all came together, showing people what’s out there and what’s possible, and then they’re trying the food.

We featured on an episode of Countryfile in 2017 when we’d made a drink like a wild Campari. Sean Fletcher came to see us and sipped on a powerful Negroni we had made from wild ingredients. Then we became busy with everyone who saw us on TV. And soon after, the extreme TripAdvisor reviews started.

By that point, I felt I should have removed myself. To concentrate on being a person creating things, I’d stopped enjoying that place. Like the IT job, my head blew up, and everything went downhill with the business, so we decided to shut it, the most abrupt end ever.

“With foraging, it’s important we are clear with everyone that you only take what you need. Be responsible and respectful of nature; you can have quite an impact, so there is much to consider.”

So, you’ve already gained many strings to your bow. What happened next?

George. I put myself on www.workaway.info; essentially, I visited different places, getting food and board for helping people on specific projects. So, my partner, our dog, and I got in the car, and our first destination was Slovenia, where I did some manual labour. We were duck-sitting 40 ducks for a month while the owner was away. I just wanted to swap skills and not deal with money.

We had fresh duck eggs; I’d walk around this beautiful hilly area, find some wild garlic, and bake some bread; it was ideal. And when the guy got home, I helped him build a greenhouse on the side of a hill.

From Slovenia, we went to Slovakia, then to Poland. My profile on Workaway said Foragers, so people were interested in that. I did a woodland retreat where I helped people build things out of the wood for kids, and we did a sensory garden.

In Poland, many people had basements where they grew potatoes, pickled gherkins, and brewed drinks. So, I learned how to make good pickles. And this was tapping into a bit of my heritage as well. That was great, nothing too fancy. I just carried on learning from these people. I did jobs and projects in Lithuania and then Latvia and learned new skills.

By the time we got to Estonia, it got cold going into October and November. So, we took a long drive to the French-Italian border, with many stops along the way. I managed three ski chalets there, which was not the best job of the trip.

When COVID kicked in, we decided to head back to the UK. We drove to Bilbao to catch a ferry home but hadn’t pre-booked tickets. Instead, we found a cheap place just off the beach in Portugal.

That was where it all came together for me. I decided to make many things I had been making at the pub. Like a Negroni, for example, which I’m mixing with loads of wild fruits inspired by Poland. I knew I still wanted to do foraging, and I was drawn to making pickles, ferments, and everything else I’d learned and enjoyed making and sharing with people.

Is that when you started Flavour Fred?

George. We were told to return to the UK when Britain decided to lock down, so we made it onto a ferry this time. We had no money back in England, and a friend told me about a Chef and a restaurant called Oren on Shacklewell Lane in Hackney. They do Eastern Mediterranean food: flatbreads, hummus, tahini, pickles, and ferments; it’s tasty. I worked there for a while, which was great and fitted with everything I’ve been explaining.

In the meantime, I was positioning myself to launch my courses. I liked the name Flavour Fred over Forager Fred because I’m more interested in where flavours come from rather than just foraging.

“Flavour Fred is everything I’ve learned, and I will engage with places and people that I feel are doing really interesting things.”

So, I do events and courses nowadays where I work with regenerative farms. I’ll talk about wild ingredients, soil health, and how everything works together. On the courses, people try my drinks, combining different elements of what I do and offer. I tell people what I’m all about. Share ideas of what you can do; I’ll give you all my recipes in a two or three hour session. And if you are not interested in the making part you can buy the finished things from me.

I’ve run courses in Saint Helen’s Wood in Hastings, which is a really nice site managed by the Saint Helen’s Wood Preservation Society. They have a lovely brick oven there. I take people around; it’s about being in nature amongst the ingredients we may have used. You might want to consider medicinal information or folklore and history. For some of the events, I’ll do drinks and food afterwards.

The Woodland Trust has agreed for me to run courses which talk about soil health, the diverse environment of nature, and everything that’s going on at some of our sites. That is specifically not foraging; it is areas where we’re trying to preserve a lot of the diversity. I do some courses in West Sussex, a place near Warninglid, and I’m trying to engage with as many people, trusts, and businesses as possible. With fun, educational sessions about where flavour has come from, I tie in many of the stories and folklore along the way.

I have a few more sites nearby that we’ve got dates for, and when everything is planned, I make the dates available on the Events section of www.flavourfred.com. You also find dates in London for places including Hampstead Heath and Hackney Marshes. You’ll also find my shop where you can purchase my Wild Boozes, such as my Full Year Negroni, Wild Fruits Blend and much more.

There are very significant risks of death with foraging. There are many deadly plants and loads of deadly mushrooms. There are mushrooms, sadly; I’ve had the experience of which stop your body from being able to break down alcohol. We have lost this knowledge, the way that we learnt it was through evolution. There is a certain element of engaging with nature that we need to sort of get back. The idea someone can gather mushrooms and whatever for the first time and come out of the woodland happy and safe is absolutely rubbish. Even worse, if people are going and gathering for the sake of the word foraging, and their finds just sit in their fridge and don’t get eaten.

Don’t munch on a hunch; find the fun and identification first.

George Fredenham
Flavour Fred, Flavour Forager
Fermenter, Chef and Distiller
www.flavourfred.com
Instagram