It feels like spring is just around the corner with an early Easter we are heading back up to Yorkshire, the site of many a happy childhood holiday and where I first introduced Nick to the joys of wild garlic this prolific wild herb is beginning to send up its first tender leaves and coming soon to a woodland near you making a stroll in the woods smell like a visit to the local pizzeria .
This weekend we also found wild growing watercress amazingly near a site called Cressbrook in the Peak District . If you are harvesting it yourself be sure to wash it well.
I am never happier than when foraging and cooking with the results by myself the watecress and garlic would probably have been fine as a salad but it was Saturday night and we had scored some lovely mature steaks and as ever trying to get through the vegebox potato mountain so made a warm potato salad with the wild garlic and let the peppery watercress speak for itself on the side.
Warm Potato and Wild Garlic Salad
10 potatoes freshly boiled
15 wild garlic leaves torn into strips
Dressing this looks like a lot but the potatoes will really suck it up
3 heaped tbps honey
1tbps of mustard
10ml vinegar
10ml olive oil
Mix together the dressing with the torn garlic leaves
After draining the freshly boiled potatoes toss while still piping hot in the dressing and garlic leaves and serve . If you use cut potatoes they will suck up more of the dressing
I have also used wild garlic to make a pesto fantastic in soups , on pasta or potatoes
Wild Garlic Pesto
Finely chopped wild garlic leaves with olive oil, walnuts & roasted lemon ( I half lemons and drizzle them with olive oil baking in the oven on a medium temperature for 30 minutes and then keep them in the fridge covered in oil for up to a few weeks – roasting intensifies and mellows the flavour)
Spinach Soup with Wild Garlic Pesto
I managed to forgage some wild garlic a couple of weeks ago. I love the stuff. The flowers look so pretty on your soup.
Mmmm that looks good … there used to be wild garlic on the drive of my horrible convent boarding school, but we were never given it to eat – such a shame.
Joanna