Wild Garlic
Or an homage to March...
March is filled with promise of Spring. But it also denoted both the start and end of lockdown. My poor son, a March baby, entirely missed both his seventh and eighth birthdays - unable to go nuts on a trampoline or zip wire with his (strictly male) friends, he instead had to make do with his boring mum and dad and annoying little sisters. He was pretty good at pretending that a rubbish homemade cake and a nice socially-distanced walk made up for the lack of fun, ‘E’ numbers and party bags, but ever since we’ve gone above and beyond to make up it. This year for his 11th birthday we’ve told him that he can do whatever he likes, which might well have been a mistake. We’ll see. He’s picked a Pad Thai for his birthday supper and so it was to him we dedicated last week’s Thai takeaway…
He won’t get excited about the daffs that appear around the time of his birthday but I will. After the first bleak winter here, the daffs hitherto hidden under the lawn bloomed copiously, carpets of yellow and white everywhere. That we had no idea of their subterraneum existence made their dramatic entrance all the more pleasing and after our postage stamp garden in London replete with fake hoover-able grass, this floral bounty was yet another reminder of the wisdom of our decision to move to Devon. No more £5-a-bunch daffs from a petrol station off the A4 for us.
With my cook’s hat on (metaphorically - I’ve never been a fan of the ego-stroking ‘toque’) my thoughts turn, on seeing the first daffs, to wild garlic. What a glorious thing, what a treat! What bounty! I might use this column in the coming months to rail against 90% of the ‘foraged’ food that certain chefs scatter on their otherwise delicious plates of food. Hint: there’s a reason that mugwort isn’t commercially available - it’s horrible. But wild garlic, now that’s the stuff. Great carpets of verdant, pungent leaves filling the air with possibility. You can be driving down a lane with all of your windows up and still get hit by an allium whiff. I don’t think you and I could be friends if you don’t pull over immediately and pillage the offending verge immediately.
Conveniently our High Grange Fire Schools start back just after the Spring equinox. This year, wild garlic will be front and centre, so versatile an ingredient is it. Don’t use it as a salad leaf though - this is an error, the pungency is too great, too harsh until tempered with a little heat so a rough cut pesto for example is fine but make sure that the pasta is piping hot before you stir it in. Stir fries, marinades and stuffings for lamb, chicken and pork are all lovely vehicles for wild garlic and of course soups, sauces and flavoured butters are sublime with its gentle heat. Last year I dressed a shepherds pie with a few leaves of wild garlic - before baking in our Kamado Joe barbecue - I remember now, the lovely garlic-y hit that these few leaves imbibed into buttery mash and a little texture too as they crisped in the heat.
I fully admit that I am not a forager but when it comes to wild garlic I am evangelical. Perhaps, like the daffodils it’s because I remember working at Borough Market in London for many years and seeing bunches of the stuff selling for £15/kilo and now I have too much to ever cook with on my literal doorstep. Wait! Does anyone have a van? This time next year we’ll be millionaires!