The Joys of Wild Garlic

All about wild garlic: your new favourite herb

Known officially as ‘Allium Ursinum’ and colloquially as bear’s garlic, wood garlic and ‘ramsons’, the wild garlic plant is a delicious free addition to the larder at this time of year. You can find them growing all over the country, especially in woodlands and by roadsides, and even in parts of London!

They have shiny, dark green leaves shaped like a pointed oval and, as the season progresses, beautiful, star-like white flowers. More importantly, however, they smell very strongly of onions – you’ll be able to locate them in the woods just by following their smell.

Unlike domestic or cultivated garlic, wild garlic leaves are much more widely used than its roots or bulbs, as these are much smaller than those of cultivated garlic. However, the whole plant is edible, so if you want to give the roots a go then do! The flowers are also edible and look wonderful sprinkled onto salad.

How to pick

When you’re picking, try to leave some buds so that the plant can reproduce, and there’ll be some around for you next year! If you’re after the leaves, pinch the leaf off at the stem, leaving the root in the ground if you can – the leaves will often grow back a second time if you leave them enough stem.

When I picked my lot a few days ago, the buds were sprouting but hadn’t yet flowered (they look a bit like pointy seed pods). These ‘pods’ are absolutely delicious pan-fried in butter and olive oil and sprinkled with a little salt – crispy and soft, and tasting mildly of roast garlic. I thoroughly recommend you pick some if you’re out and about.

You need to take a little care when picking wild garlic as there are a few plants that look similar but aren’t edible, notably Lily of the Valley. There’s freely available advice on the internet about telling them apart, but the main clue is the smell – you’ll notice an oniony scent anywhere where wild garlic grows, and it’s really pungent when you crush a leaf between your fingers. Don’t worry: it doesn’t taste nearly as strong as it smells! In addition, the flowers of Lily of the Valley are bell-shaped, rather like snowdrops, and its leaves grow from one central stem, whereas wild garlic leaves each grow individually on one stem.

Eating it

The younger leaves of wild garlic are best for salads, as they’re a little more tender. When picking, you’ll sometimes find them towards the edge of a cluster, or underneath the larger, older leaves. They’re also wonderful chopped into ribbons and added towards the end of a stir-fry, especially with some julienne of ginger. You can add the younger roots to stir-fries as well – treat them a bit like spring onion. Don’t leave out the older leaves – they’re great for soup, since you’ll be pureeing it anyway, and you can also blanche them in some boiling salted water until they wilt and eat them a bit like spinach.

So that’s old leaves, young leaves, roots, flowers, buds; soup, salad, stir-fries, blanched leaves, pan-fried buds. You can even make wild garlic pesto (no joke – the recipe’s below). This could well be the most useful plant in the universe. Now cook with it!

Wild Garlic Soup

Ingredients

Knob of butter

1 large onion

1 large potato

Medium-sized mixing bowl full of wild garlic leaves

50ml white wine

1 litre chicken stock – preferably homemade, but stock cubes are fine

2 tbs crème fraiche or cream

Salt and pepper

Method

Roughly chop the onion and potato and wash the garlic leaves well. Sweat the onion in the butter until it’s translucent and soft, then add the potato and sweat for another minute or so.

Deglaze the pan with the white wine (just pour it in and scrape the yummy bits off the bottom), and let it reduce to a light syrup, then add the chicken stock and let it simmer for 20 minutes or until the potato is well cooked through.

Once the potato is cooked through, add the garlic leaves and cook for another two minutes once they’ve wilted. Purée the soup until it is a consistent colour and texture, then add the crème fraiche or cream if you’re using it, and stir it in well. Taste it, and season to taste with salt and pepper. Then pour into a lovely big bowl and enjoy!

As a garnish, you have a few lovely options. You can set aside a few leaves of garlic, and slice these into really thin strips to top each bowl, with a spoonful of cream. Or you can make up a little bowl of pesto from the recipe below and serve the soup with a blob swirled in. Again, this looks fantastic with a bit of cream swirled in too!

Wild Garlic Pesto

Ingredients

A couple of large handfuls of wild garlic

1 small shallot

50-60g hard, salty cheese such as parmesan

50-60g pine nuts or shelled, peeled walnuts

80 ml olive oil, plus enough to cover the pesto in the jam jar

½ tsp salt and ½ tsp pepper

1 tsp sugar

Method

Wash and thoroughly dry the garlic leaves, grate the cheese, and very roughly chop the shallot and nuts. If you need to peel the walnuts, blanche them for a few minutes in rapidly boiling water and try to peel them while they're hot: it's a fiddly job at the best of times, but this makes it a little easier.

Pulse the nuts and shallot in the food processor until broken up somewhat, then add the garlic leaves and oil and continue to pulse until the garlic is chopped up very small and a consistent texture is achieved.

Fold the cheese into the mixture, then season to taste with salt, pepper and sugar. Pour it into clean jam jars, then top up with oil until the pesto is totally covered (this is important to keep it fresh and green).

Keep your pesto in the fridge; it’s at its best up to a week after making it. It’s great with meat, particularly chicken and sausages; with soft, mild cheeses or salads; and with the soup recipe above. It’s also yummy on pasta!

A final note: I've just looked out of my kitchen window into the crummy, bin-filled yard that counts as my garden, and guess what's growing in all the corners? You got it: wild garlic. It's probably closer than you think!

'One-Tray' Chicken and Potatoes

A fairly quick roast chicken number which I knocked together for supper last night. It's pretty simple, but turns out delicious with gravy and some fresh vegetables, or even just frozen peas if you're feeling lazy. The secret is the lemon - I always include a lemon with my roast potatoes, it does something mysterious and delicious to them which I may not understand, but still can't get enough of. Lemon goes fantastically with a roasting chicken as well. In addition, putting chicken and potatoes in the same tray lets the roasties absorb some of the chicken's flavour while they cook, which makes for extra-delicious potatoes.

Straight on to the recipe today - there's not a lot of extra chatter needed about roasting a chicken I think.


Ingredients
(for 3-4)

One large whole chicken
Five medium-sized potatoes suitable for roasting - King Edwards and Maris Pipers both roast well and are easy to get your hands on
Whole head of garlic
Big handful of whole fresh rosemary stems (don't use dried, just leave it out if you can't get a hold of it)
A whole lemon, fairly large
Knob of butter
Generous splash of olive oil

Method

First off, peel your potatoes and chop to the size you like your roasties. I make mine slightly smaller than instinct tells me, as they're more likely to get nice and crispy in the chicken's cooking time.

Splash some olive oil into a large roasting tin, arrange the rosemary in the centre and make sure it's coated in oil, then settle the chicken on top of the rosemary. Scatter the potatoes around the edges of the tray. Chop the garlic head in half, then break off the individual half-cloves and scatter them over and around the potatoes and chicken. rub a couple over the chicken, and if you like stuff a few into its cavity. Separate your knob of butter into three pieces - one for the cavity of the chicken, and two to balance on or rub over its back. Finally, chop the lemon in half, then half again, and squeeze each quarter over the potatoes and chicken. Drop the squeezed-out rind into each corner of the tray. Now pop the whole thing into a medium oven, around 180 C.


That's the hard part over - all you need to do now is to wait for it all to cook. This will take at least an hour, probably more, and even up to two depending on the size of your chicken and the strength of your oven. Keep checking it regularly, and if the chicken's not browning properly you can turn up the oven to high for ten minutes to get it going. 


It's obviously important to cook your chicken through, to avoid infections like salmonella which are present in raw chicken. To check, stick a knife or skewer into the thickest part of the bird. If the juice which comes out is clear, rather than pink, it's cooked through. You'll be able to see if the meat isn't done when you carve the bird anyway - it should be opaque and a fairly pure white colour - if it's pale pink or at all translucent, you might consider giving it another few minutes in the oven. It gets easier to tell as you become more experienced.


When your chicken is finally done, the potatoes will probably still need a while to finish cooking. This is fine - lift out the chicken from the tray, pop it in a serving dish, cover with some tinfoil and leave in a warm place to rest. All meat needs 'resting' after cooking - it basically means keeping the meat warm but leaving it for a while before eating, which allows the proteins in the meat to relax and distributes the juices more evenly, leading to a juicier and more tender mouthful when you come to eat.


When you remove the chicken, give the pan a good shake to agitate the potatoes and mix the rosemary in more evenly. If you're making gravy, you'll also want to carefully tip the juices from the meat into a separate container for use in a sec, and sprinkle a bit more olive oil over the potatoes to make up for the lost fat.


While the potatoes are finishing off, in a hotter oven if they have a long way to go, you can cook your vegetables - frozen peas are quick, and broccoli is supposed to protect against some forms of cancer, so they'd be my choice. You can also make the gravy. Once the potatoes are done, you're ready to eat. Enjoy a nice roast dinner once in a while!


Finally: GRAVY for this chicken dish

My standard gravy for a chicken roast goes as follows: 

Either skim the fat off the chicken juices, or use one of those clever little separating jugs like this one to get to the good bits of dripping and discard the bad. Put the good bits (the liquid that sinks to the bottom when you leave the juice to sit for 5 minutes, while the fat sits on top) into a saucepan, add a tablespoon of flour, and stir vigorously with a whisk over a low heat until it's all combined. Then pour in about a pint of chicken stock (homemade is best, of course, but Knorr stock cubes are a good substitute if you've run out), whisking all the time. Add a glass of red wine, and leave to simmer gently for five minutes. Taste and season. You can add a spoonful of redcurrant jelly if you like a sweeter sauce, but otherwise that's it. Not too hard, and way better than Bisto!
 

Lemon, Bacon and Parsley Pasta

Greetings, dear followers. Back again after the usual long absence, and today, on my first evening home, I thought I'd knock together an easy supper. I'm not entirely sure where the idea for this first came from, but it combines some of my favourite ingredients. It's a dish I often turn to when the idea of pasta appeals, but a heavy cream or tomato sauce doesn't. It has the added benefit of being super-easy. And tasting good.

Ingredients
(for one)

Pasta for one - my favourite kind is fusilli, the twisty ones (named after rifle barrels, by the way), of which you need about three handfuls for a fairly generous serving. Spaghetti is next favourite, and to measure that you bunch it together in your hands and allow a bunch about the size of a one penny piece (or a little bigger) per person.
Three rashers of bacon
Olive oil
One clove of garlic
Juice of just under half a lemon
Glass, or just over, of white wine
Around a tablespoon of chopped parsley (PLEASE don't use dried, it honestly tastes like dead grass. You're better off using none if you can't get it fresh. You could substitute for a different herb as well)
A tiny splash of cream if you feel like it
Salt and pepper to season


Method

First, cook off the bacon however you like it best and set it aside to cool off a bit. If you're a veggie (or even if you're not, actually), I think pine nuts would be kind of yummy with this dish as the sauce is almost like a hot salad dressing anyway, so it builds on the 'pasta-based salad'. You can leave the bacon out, although I think it brings something nothing else really can. I also thought about the uses of halloumi cheese here - it would make the dish richer, but the lemon juice might help cut through that. If you wanted to use halloumi, you'd coat it in seasoned flour and fry it off until golden brown, then add it at the point in the recipe where the bacon goes in. 

Right, the bacon should have cooled off a bit by now, so tear it up into bitesize chunks. This is the kind of pasta you can eat with just a fork as you crouch like a praying mantis over the latest episode of Glee.


Now set some water on a high heat to boil for your pasta, with a generous pinch of salt added. While you wait for it to come to the boil, crush and finely chop the garlic and chop the parsley ready to add later. When the water's boiling, add the pasta. 


In a separate, smaller pan, put a splash of olive oil and the chopped garlic, and cook over a medium heat for a minute or two until the garlic softens and the oil begins to bubble a bit. At this point, add the lemon juice and white wine. 

Just a quick note about the lemon juice. You're about to reduce the wine, garlic and juice mixture, which will boil off some of the water and intensify all the flavours. One thing I've found is that if you add too much lemon juice, it can begin to taste too strongly sour, so go reasonably easy with that lemon half. If it does mess up on you, a good way to rectify the situation is with a spoonful of cream and judicious seasoning.


The next bit is easy: keep an eye on the pasta and the lemon and wine mix as they bubble away. You don't want the pasta to overcook or the sauce to reduce right away; if the first looks like happening, drain it; if the second, lower the heat and add a little water or a bit more wine if necessary. Once both pasta and sauce are cooked (the sauce should hopefully be ready first), drain the pasta and pop it back in the pan. Add the sauce, bacon, chopped parsley and a splash of cream if you feel like it. Stir it all in and season to taste. Instant supper. 

Ok, almost instant. 

Thai Fishcakes (and Garlic Bread)

Hello, hello, hello. I'm back, after a slightly-longer-than-planned 'one week' hiatus (that one worked...) I've been staying with the Boyfriend again, and extending his culinary knowledge even more. I won't bore you with stories of all the alpine cooking I did during my ski break, because to be quite honest we just ate a lot of pasta. In addition, while we did make one sauce ourselves it was pronounced 'not saucy enough'  by the Boyfriend (genuine quotation there) and has therefore not made the cut for blog inclusion. No, really, it hasn't.



So, Thai fishcakes and garlic bread, both of which I made this week at Boyfriend's house, as part of my Teach Him Cooking initiative. I have to say, he did a lot of this himself and both dishes turned out brilliantly.



Thai Fishcakes

Boyfriend and I made this for our supper, and served it up to his mum as well. She loved it, which was a big relief for me - cooking for any mother is always an anxious time, and the other half's mother is the most nailbiting of all! We used the recipe from Real Cooking by Nigel Slater. By the way, in case you're wondering, this is not my only cookbook. It is, however, the Boyfriend's only cookbook, so whenever I cook with him we use it: hence its frequent appearances on these pages.

Fishcakes, like many things, almost all follow a basic recipe. Poach the fish, often in milk; mix with mashed potatoes and herbs and flavourings of your choice; form into fishcake shapes with your hands; possibly dip in flour, beaten egg, breadcrumbs (in that order); fry in shallow hot oil and enjoy.

These fishcakes, however, followed a slightly different method, which to my mind made them much more authentically Thai. The flavourings (chilli, lemongrass, garlic, shallott, ginger, nam pla - thai fish sauce, if you were wondering - coriander, salt and pepper) were pulsed into a slush in the food processor, as was the raw fish. We then combined the two by hand in a bowl (fishy fingers, lovely), made fishcakes out of the raw fish with a little flour to stop it sticking to our hands, and shallow fried these to eat. This did mean we had to be careful that they were cooked right the way through as well as being nice and crispy on the outside, but on the plus side the lack of potatoes made them waistline-friendly. Sadly, we immediately cancelled this out by serving them with roast potatoes.

We also served them with a green leaf salad and, most importantly, the dipping sauce included in the recipe, which was an absolute stunner and very simple to make. Vinegar and sugar heated up until syrupy, then add soy sauce and chopped chilli, garlic and coriander. Genuinely beautiful.

Once again, I'm sorry not to include a recipe, but you can find it in Nigel Slater's Real Cooking. He should definitely be paying me for the promotion.


Garlic Bread

Really just so I have an actual recipe for you today, I thought I'd mention the garlic bread we made a couple of days ago also. I should stress that this is not meant as an accompaniment for the fishcakes...

Garlic bread may be readily available in supermarkets everywhere, freezable and all, but it's also pretty easy to make if you're feeling saintly. Made all the easier in this case by the fact that we had lunch at Pizza Express and blagged some of their garlic butter to use!

If you aren't best friends with the staff at your local pizza emporium, you might want to thoroughly crush some garlic, mix it with salt and mash it into some butter until it's thoroughly combined.

After the garlic butter-obtaining stage, its easy. Grab a baguette and cut some slits in it, as if you were slicing it but don't go all the way through. Shove some butter into each slit, wrap the whole mess in some tin foil and bake it until it's a bit crispy and all the butter has melted. Munch.

Recipe for Garlic Bread

Ingredients:

Garlic

Sea salt 

Butter

A Baguette or two

Recipe:

1. Mash together the crushed garlic, salt and butter until thoroughly combined.

2. Cut slits into the baguette

3. Put some butter into each slit

4. Bake in a hot oven, wrapped in tinfoil, until crispy and until the butter has melted.