It’s not often that I feel passionate enough about television blunders to openly rant about them, but this is one of those times.
Last night I watched as famed chef Jason Atherton cook a delicious dessert with a syrup of wild….cow parsley?!!! On the search for a farm shop as part of the tv show Ten Mile Menu Jason hopped out of the car and started telling celebrity athlete Colin Jackson about the joys of wild food.
He points out the bountiful hedgerows laden with elderflower (at this point, I can only see cow parsley but continue watching with complete confidence). Then the camera switches to them picking….cow parsley. Truly, they are stood at the roadside gathering a large bunch of cow parsley.
I had to rewind to watch again. I’m so certain that he picked cow parsley rather than elderflowers. I couldn’t believe that a chef such as Jason Atherton (winner of multiple dishes on The Great British Menu and former chef patron at Gordon Ramsey’s Michelin-starred Maze restaurant) could make such a huge mistake.
By this point I was convinced that when they got to the cooking part, that they would have realised their error and the cow parsley would have been substituted for a bunch of elderflower. But no! There was the cow parsley sitting on the kitchen counter ready to be made into an elderflower syrup…surely not!!!
Through some kind of kitchen wizardry Jason Atherton managed to transform a bunch of somewhat unfragrant hedgerow weeds into a delicious elderflower syrup to accompany his dessert. The dessert was garnished with more of those pretty ‘elderflowers’…noooooo!
I adore both cow parsley (for decoration purposes only) and elderflower (for a refreshing summery drink) and know what they look like, know their differences. I just can’t believe that I saw someone mistake one for the other and even garnish a dessert with cow parsley flowers.
Image: dreamcrisp; Hainault Forest
Image: Farm Woodland Forum; Mersea Wildlife
Did anyone else see this and share my concerns?!!! If so, please get in contact!
18 comments
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August 1, 2010 at 5:37 am
Margaret
Hi,
I saw it too and thought someone was going to stop him using it!!!
Margaret
August 1, 2010 at 7:19 am
Tim
You’re not the only one. I wondered where they’d seen the elderflower and then it dawned on me that, yes, they were going to instead pick the cow parsley. Bizarre.
August 1, 2010 at 2:22 pm
Becky
With those wild foraging skills we can only be grateful it wasn’t mushroom season. Good has been distrous.
August 3, 2010 at 7:40 am
judi
thank goodness they didnt pick the similar looking wild hemlock!!!
August 4, 2010 at 8:20 am
Lucy
I saw this too and it has been bugging me ever since! How embarrassing for them. I mean really, the differences between cow parsley and eldeflower are immense! Saying that, when I have been scouring the streets looking for elderflower I have occasionally and accidentally turned my head to cow parsley, but only for a second (because they are both a blur of white), and would realise if I got any closer and certainly wouldn’t need ot smell it! And those two were burying their heads in the stuff and taking in great nasal gulps of it. I need to stop watching daytime TV and get on with my work…
August 4, 2010 at 11:49 am
clayearthcafe
Thanks for posting – don’t have a telly but that really made me laugh
The questions on my mind are
1. Did anyone taste it and get sick or die?
2. If not…was it tasty?
August 6, 2010 at 7:43 am
CharlieB
Margaret – someone should have stopped him using it, naughty ITV I say!
August 6, 2010 at 7:43 am
CharlieB
Tim – Following all of the comments on this place I am pleased to see I wasn’t the only one! Very very strange…and for a chef like Jason Atherton
August 6, 2010 at 7:45 am
CharlieB
Becky – too true, although as some people mentioned there is wild hemlock which although is a lot larger than cow parsley does look similar. Let’s hope Jason Atherton hasn’t convinced too many novices to go pick elderflower…
August 6, 2010 at 7:46 am
CharlieB
Judi – thanks for the comment, that was exactly my thought after getting over the initial shock that they were genuinely going to pick cow parsley!
August 6, 2010 at 7:48 am
CharlieB
Lucy – it clearly seems that no one at ITV has realised – I kept waiting for someone to say soemthing or the voiceover in the credits to say “warning: huge error!” Anyway, for those of us who did noticed Jason Atherton looks like a bit of ninny, especially for espousing the joys of wild food shortly before cooking with a bunch of cow parsley…of dear
August 6, 2010 at 7:51 am
CharlieB
You really missed a great piece of television. Attempted answers to your questions:
1. a group of hockey girls did eat the dessert…not sure if anyone got sick or died, don’t think cow parsley would do that much harm, just can’t imagine eating cow parsley flowers sprinkled over the top is that tasty…unless you’re a cow
2. the big question on everyone’s mind – was does ‘elderflower’ syrup taste like when made with cow parsley???!!!! this really bugs me, because if they did make it with cow parsley, it surely didn’t taste anything like elderflower so it much have just been a sugary liquid, but if they did use elderflowers why didn’t they say “oops we made a mistake, silly us” and why would they add cow parsley flowers to the final dish…?
I suspect we’ll never know!
August 7, 2010 at 4:14 pm
bill Cave
The mistake stood out a mile — but has anyone told ITV ? how do you tell ITV ? Had the road they were on been by a stream this could have easily been hemlock and then there would have been lots of young dead hockey players lying about !!
August 8, 2010 at 10:12 pm
Rhonda
Thank goodness that I found this site.
I saw the programme and have been questioning my own knowledge and sanity ever since, so much so, that in this case, I was searching to compare features of cow parsley and elderflower to try to allay my confusion.
Thankyou!
August 9, 2010 at 9:28 am
CharlieB
Hi Bill, thanks for the comment – I think it would be great to know if anyone has tried contacting ITV, maybe I will look into it.
August 9, 2010 at 9:29 am
CharlieB
Hi Rhonda, it seems there have been quite a few people like us who couldn’t quite believe our eyes and questioned our sanity – looks like we’re not all going mad!
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