Wild Garlic Season is here again

Wild Garlic pasta pesto

It’s wild garlic season again, whoopie! I just ate a fabulous sandwich of local Devonian Curworthy cheese with a perfect accompaniment of garlic leaves.  Here are some more ideas of how to use this abundant spring herb.

Things to do with wild garlic:

Pesto – Whizz the leaves with pine nuts, grated Parmesan and olive oil to make pesto. Or add pancetta, and egg to make a variation of wild garlic carbonara

Rice – Wild garlic risotto

Mash – Chop the leaves and mix them into mashed potato

Fish – Wrap the leaves around fillets of buttered trout and bake gently in the oven. The leaves also compliment smoked fish

Mayo – Chop the leaves into sour cream or fresh mayonnaise and use as a dip

Salad – Use whole leaves in salads and decorate with the flowers.

Sandwiches – Add the leaves to cheese or ham and mustard sandwiches.

Spinach – steam with spinach, I prefer to mix as they are a bit watery steamed alone.

Puree – puree with oil and use as a drizzle or dressing.

Scrambled eggs – chopped into creamy scrambled eggs, divine.

Butter – flavour softened butter with chopped leaves and harden in the fridge

Frittata – one of the best

Hummus – tahini, chickpeas, wild garlic

or try my wild garlic flower tempura

Wild Garlic Tempura

or use wild garlic instead of nettles in my gnocci recipe

Nettle/wild garlic gnocci

Enjoy.

 

Wild Garlic Soup

A pathway of wild garlic at Buckland Abbey, nr Yelverton

This is the greenest of spring soups that you can also enrich with chicken stock, cream, or yoghurt if you wish. I just like to keep it simple. The trick is to add the garlic leaves at the end, AFTER cooking up the potato in the stock. It keeps the flavour fresh. Last year I wrote up the recipe for wild garlic flower tempura which looks beautiful served on the side (with a little chilli dip). If you don’t have a food processor or blender, a potato masher and a chopping knife does the job just as well. The soup is good served hot or cold.

2 tablespoons unsalted butter

1 medium onion, peeled and chopped finely

450g potatoes, peeled and cut into 1/2-inch pieces

500ml Marigold vegetable stock

3 generous handfuls of wild garlic leaves

Coarse salt and freshly ground pepper to taste

In a heavy-bottomed saucepan, sauté the onion in the butter until softened but not coloured.

Add the vegetable stock and potatoes and bring to the boil.

Simmer for 15 to 20 minutes, until the potatoes are cooked.

Blend the soup in a food processor.

Now add the raw garlic leaves and blend again until the leaves have melded into the soup.

Season with salt and pepper to taste.

Other things to do with wild garlic:

Pesto – Whizz the leaves with pine nuts, grated Parmesan and olive oil to make pesto. Or add pancetta, egg to make a variation of wild garlic carbonara.

Rice – Wild garlic risotto

Mash – Chop the leaves and mix them into mashed potato.

Fish – Wrap the leaves around fillets of buttered trout and bake gently in the oven. They also work well with smoked fish.

Mayo – Chop the leaves into sour cream or fresh mayonnaise and use as a dip

Salad – Use whole leaves in salads and decorate with the flowers.

Sandwiches – Add the leaves to cheese or ham and mustard sandwiches.

Spinach – steam with spinach, they can be a bit watery steamed alone.

Puree – puree with oil and use as a drizzle or dressing.

Scrambled eggs – chopped into creamy scrambled eggs, divine.

Butter – flavour butter with chopped leaves.

Frittata – one of the best

Hummus – tahini, chickpeas, wild garlic