Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #24343 in DVD
• Released on: 2006-07-17
• Rating: Exempt
• Format: PAL
• Original language: English
• Number of discs: 1
• Running time: 144 minutes

DVD Description

In A Cook On The Wild Side, celebrity chef and host Hugh Fearnley-Whittingstall creates delectable feasts using ingredients found in nature, not the supermarket. Follow the eccentric cook as he goes anywhere and eats anything in the vast and under-used resource of nature's larder. On his journey into the wilderness, Hugh discovers recipes ranging from eel soup to rook, and from pigeon pie to tasty grey squirrel; his desserts even include such delicacies as gooseberry and puffball soufflé. In his search for the ultimate natural ingredients, he finds himself confronting poachers and abseiling cliffs--all to bring you edible alternatives to the usual menu.

Customer Reviews

Leaves a nasty taste in the mouth: they don't make 'em like this any more, thank Goodness!
Well, this DVD is really showing its age these days. Of course, the biggest problem is that there's not really that much cooking in the thing. There's plenty of time to show us a "witch" chanting and singing around a fire, or George Monbiot holding forth about the politics of open access, but then very little real "meat". It's really "entertainment", rather than serious cookery, with far too little information content.

Even the recipes he does give get mangled somehow -- a beginner following the "oakleaf wine" recipe literally would end up killing the yeast by adding it to "boiling water". Yet how even more irritating that there's no information on the nettle beer.

Watching this, after having been exposed to Ray Mears' "Wild Food" series, one becomes painfully aware of the shortcomings of Hugh's approach. To summarize this issue: "Where's the carbohydrate staple coming from?" Hugh's dinners often consist of protein (meat or fish) served with some leafy herbs. That's not a sensible diet for folk who're working outside, so why not be honest, and show how to combine wild food with cultivated food to make a rounded meal?

The "gastro-wagon" idea is cute, to the point of silliness. Given the recent controversy about fakery in "documentary" programmes, one almost groans as one watches Hugh pretend to shower at the side of his vehicle, or wake up in his boat-bedroom on the roof. "And look! Here's some really helpful person who knows about herbs/rabbits/rooks, whom I just happened to meet on the road." As if there were no researchers and a production crew with cameras, lights and mikes, costing an arm and a leg, working to a tight shooting schedule.

Worth watching for the cringes, if you like that sort of thing. Not worth watching for the cookery, or the foraging information -- look elsewhere.

A brilliant series
I have just been watching this series again on televison & it's been a joy. Hugh, aboard the "gastro wagon" (his converted Land Rover)roams the countryside looking for "free" food from natures larder (as it were). He also takes to the water ways on a canal longboat & is up trees (getting rooks for rook pie) & scaling cliffs & the like, to get all manner of wild food.
It really is a "Cook On The Wild Side" , the emphasis very much on the "wild" - fascinating & a must for all Hugh fans & for those with a keen interest in foods you can find growing on your doorstep in Britain's countryside.
I will be buying this post haste !!!
UPDATE - I did buy this & the whole series is just absolutely bang on. I advise you to treat yourselves immediately & then get the "Edwardian House" DVD which is equally superb