Asceticism in the Middle Ages: Eats Roots and Leaves

The world’s best restaurant, according to Restaurant Magazine, is Noma in Copenhagen. Its head chef, René Redzepi, has made his name from serving dishes that include the apparently inedible – lichen, moss, obscure molluscs and even ‘edible soil’ feature as part of this new wave of ‘molecular gastronomy’. Redzepi’s philosophy of making full use of the free food offered by nature, food that can be harvested by anyone on a casual walk in the country, is simply the most spectacular example of a trend that has been increasingly popular in recent years. From the survival guru Ray Mears to hunter-gatherer Hugh Fearnley-Whittingstall the message is to pick, gather and even kill from Nature’s provender: to graze, one might say. There is nothing new about this: in all societies people have used food that grows wild to supplement what they sow and raise themselves. Even the moral dimension that sometimes accompanies these exhortations – the need to conserve food supplies, concerns over food miles, the moral superiority of home-grown and locally picked food – is an echo of a much older theme. Religious reformers, from the earliest Christian hermits in Egypt and Syria to the monks of the great monasteries of northern England, recognised the virtue of eating simple food that could be picked and needed little or no preparation.