About a year ago I was romping through God's own country - or Yorkshire to those of us who possess all our own teeth - and it was effing everywhere. I'm talking about wild garlic, or ramsons if you prefer. So i started wolfed a load of it down and repelled all form of human, animal and vampire for the next two to three hours.
For the next month if you see a bit of wild garlic, probably in woodland near a lovely old patch of bluebells, chances are you'll see a whole host of it. If you're unsure, give it a whiff, and if it smells of a Frenchman's breath you've got the right leaf.
It's a personal highlight of Spring and a gem of an ingredient with a whole host of food - lamb or venison for example - or great just as a spring-time broth. How to harvest it, use it and pretty much everything you could hop to know about the plant is available from this excellent blog post two years ago from the ever interesting Food Fun blog.
There's a ray of light breaking through winter's dying clouds right now, so keep your eyes open and try it with gurnard in this recipe, another from Oliver Peyton's excellent National Cookbook:
Pan-roasted red gurnard with wild garlic and clams
500g small clams, such as carpet shells
2tbsp vegetable oil
1 shallot, finely chopped
100ml dry white wine
8-12 red gurnard fillets with skin, weighing 600-700g in total
2tbsp plain flour
30g butter
100g St George's mushrooms or oyster mushrooms, sliced
100ml whipping or double cream
400g wild garlic leaves or baby spinach leaves
Serves four
Gurnard is the T-bone steak of fish. Chunky like halibut and monkfish, it has a
strong enough flavour to hold its own against the pungency of the garlic in this
dish. The season for wild garlic only lasts a few weeks, so go mad with it when
you can. It's powerful, but it doesn't linger on the palate like garlic cloves do.
1. Scrub the clams clean under cold running water. Discard any that
are open, or that do not close when tapped on the work surface.
2. Heat a large saucepan until hot, then add 1tbsp of the oil and cook
the shallot for about 2 minutes. Add the clams and wine, cover the
pan tightly and cook until the shells open, which will take about 5
minutes. Lift out the clams and set aside, discarding any that are still
closed. Strain and reserve the cooking liquid.
3. Dust the fish fillets with the flour on the skin side only.
4. Heat half of the butter in a flameproof casserole and cook the
mushrooms for about 3 minutes or until soft. Add the cooking
liquid from the clams and boil to reduce by half.
5. Heat a large frying pan (or two pans) over a medium heat and add
the remaining oil and butter. Season the fish and cook, skin-side
down, for 2 minutes. Turn the fish over and cook for 2 minutes.
6. While the fish is cooking, add the cream to the mushrooms and
boil for 1 minute, then place the clams in the pan and top with the
wild garlic. Cover and cook for about 2 minutes or just until the
garlic leaves wilt.
7. When the fish is cooked, turn it over onto its skin side again and
remove from the heat. Serve the mushrooms, clams and garlic in
four warmed bowls, topped with the gurnard.
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