Three Cornered Leeks ~ eat as much of this naughty plant as you can!

I was chatting with my friend Carol the other day, about wild garlic, and she asked if I had tried three cornered leeks.  Tried it? – I’d never even heard of it!

 So, she took me into her garden and picked me some.  Very pretty with a milder but similar smell/fragrance to wild garlic. So naturally I had play …

Firstly, having done some research (see Wild Food UK for lots of useful information on three cornered leek) and read that the whole plant is edible I nervously nibbled a flower.

I then nibbled the stem and a leaf – and the taste was very similar to wild garlic, which I love, but maybe a little milder.



Yesterday, driving round Cornwall’s gorgeous wild flower filled lanes, I spotted a patch of these naughty flowers.  

As it says on Wild Food UK …

“An invasive species brought over to the UK from the Mediterranean, it is an offence under Schedule 9 of the Wildlife and Countryside Act in England and Wales to plant or otherwise cause to grow this species in t”he wild.”

So I thought I’d better try to help eradicate the buggers and picked a big bunch and here is last night’s dinner.

A simple summery dish of roasted salmon with buttery Jersey Royals, mange tout (Rodney), asparagus and three cornered leeks.  Glass of white, naturally.

Now then, as I said, three cornered leeks are very similar to wild garlic so it would be cheating, I feel, if I just repeated all my wild garlic ideas.  Instead see my post Wild Garlic ~ Calloo Callay! for lots of info and  ideas and do the same with three cornered leeks.

So, get out there and eat some three cornered leeks!

A Tour of Britain!

I apologise to anyone who may have noticed I haven’t posted for a while – two sudden things happened, neither of them lunch, which caused this hiatus.  

The first was that I fell and hurt my hand so couldn’t type for a couple of weeks and the second was a spur of the moment decision to tour the country visiting friends and family. By the time my hand was better I was unable to use the internet because … yes, you guessed, I was in Norfolk! Very little connectivity there.

Firstly we visited friends in Wiltshire – pretty good weather here and as green and lush as we could wish for.

Secondly my sister and her family on Mersea Island off the coast of Essex, she of the excellent Art Café fame  – more about this visit in my next post or so as we had a most wonderful spontaneous alcohol tasting session!

Then to my brother and his family in poor old virtually internet-less Norfolk as mentioned above. Here we just played and relaxed and caught up with him and his, including the dogs!

Next we passed through Northumbria to eat the Very Best Fish and Chips in the Whole Wide World and Universe Ever. The place to go is Harbour View at Seaton Sluice, it was a 30 mile detour off our route but well worth it. They have limited online presence but I did find a Google+ page with some info. 

We always have haddock and it is always superb, skinless and coated in a wonderful crisp, crunchy salty batter. We have mushy peas with it and I drink a cider although my real man does the thing properly with a pot of tea. Would you believe he ate the whole of his haddock and chips (pictured here alongside his big manly arm to give an idea of size) and then kindly finished off my smaller portion which was still too much for me.

We are now on the Isle of Mull visiting one of my oldest friends and her family where, of course, the internet is much better, so here I am!

The weather has been Not Very Good At All up here – 4ºC the other day in Glencoe and now cool, rainy with 45 mph winds but it’s still a lovely place. The bluebells, primroses and violets are still in flower and everywhere is bursting forth with spring.

Last night we ate at little restaurant which is set up in the front room of someone’s house– Ballygown, I recommend it wholeheartedly.

The food was very good (I had delicious Salmon and Potato Dauphinoise followed by a warm Fudgy Brownie with Raspberries and Cream), everything including the pasta, superb bread etc. was homemade and the service was impeccable which is particularly impressive as the waiter is 4½ years old!

I think he was just helping his Mum but he brought out cutlery and wine glasses (it’s a bring-your-own sort of place so far as drinks are concerned), cleared dishes, took orders for coffee (although felt unsure he could write such a big word on his pad) and when asked if we could pay usefully said “We take cards too, you know”.  I think he is set for an excellent career.

We have managed to explore the island and go for some walks and I picked lots of wild garlic which, not having my usual well stocked store cupboard, has been a godsend.  I have made …

~   Tomato & Wild Garlic Soup

~   Pasta in Wild Garlic Alfredo

~   Cheese & Wild Garlic Mayonnaise on Toast

… and so on and so forth. Read more about lovely Wild Garlic here, but you might be a bit late for it Down South!  

Speaking of which off home to Cornwall very soon where I hope to properly resume my blogging.

Later!

Fresh, Wild, Roasted, Smoked or Black Garlic ~ delicious ways to use all of them!

Today is another one of those strange “national days” – this time the nation is the USA and the food item is garlic so, even though I am  Brit, I thought I’d write appropriately.

As one would expect I often cook with garlic, although not for my real man of course! This wonderful stuff, however, not only adds an important nuance to so many dishes, it is also a fantastic flavour (or, in fact several different fantastic flavours) in its own right which deserve to be showcased in our cooking.

Garlic Bonus!

Garlic is considered to be a strong vampire repellent so, depending where you live, this could be useful.

The 5 forms of garlic I shall be writing about today and referred to in the title of this post are – fresh, roasted, smoked, wild and black. They are all wonderful but in different ways so here are some ideas, tips and links to help you make the most of them. 

Firstly, in most cases, all these garlics are interchangeable; they all work well in …

~   Mayonnaise – homemade or bought in.
~   Salad dressings –vinaigrette recipe here and replace the fresh garlic with other forms of garlic depending what you are serving it with. These vinaigrettes also make good marinades and dipping sauces.

~   Mashed potato – with the possible exception of black garlic which is bit too sweet, I think.

~   Add to hummus and similar bean dips – basic hummus recipe and suggestions here.
~   Risotto – see here for Black Garlic Risotto recipe.
~   Pesto
~   Garlic butters and, thereafter, various forms of garlic bread, all gorgeous!
~   Rich, creamy and very easy Alfredo Sauce to use on pasta and other things too.
~   Soup – lots of recipes in my Soup Recipe Cookbook plus all the info you need to create your own recipes.
~   Garlic oils (IMPORTANT – either use immediately or freeze as they can cause botulism otherwise) – and hence croutons, drizzles on soup, dipping oils etc.

So I’m starting with wild garlic as the season is upon us and it’s time to get gathering!

Wild Garlic

Here’s a strange and irritating thing – for 14 years my sister and I ran a restaurant in Cornwall and for 14 springs we drove past, frequently, a large and rampant patch of wild garlic, remarked on the fragrance and never, ever thought of picking and using the stuff!

I have written a lot about this already – my most useful wild garlic post, I think, is this one with instructions and lots of ideas here. 

Fresh Garlic

There are, of course a myriad (and then some) things to do with fresh garlic, here are a few very simple ideas …

~   If you have a lot of garlic freeze some separated into cloves or, even better, purée peeled garlic with twice its volume of oil and then freeze. The wonder of this is that once frozen it is still soft enough to scrape off a little when needed. Do not store garlic in oil in the fridge for any longer that a few days or you might get botulism, best to freeze it asap.
~   Put peeled garlic cloves into a bottle of Vodka (I’m afraid you will probably have to drink a little Vodka fist to make room) and keep it in the freezer. Use the resulting Garlic Vodka in sauces, Bloody Marys or peculiar Martinis.
~   Slice peeled garlic cloves very, very thinly and uniformly, separate the slices and fry in a couple of centimetres of hot oil (160ºC/325°F) to light golden. This should take about 5 minutes, adjust the heat if they are going too fast. Drain well, cool well and then store for up to a week (and probably  lot longer!) in an airtight container. These are a traditional garnish in Thailand but are good sprinkled on all sorts of dishes.

Roasted Garlic

Roasting garlic makes it soft, buttery, sweet, mellow and also makes the house smell gorgeous. In fact it’s one of those smells, like baking bread or good coffee that tends to beguile people. Read here for how to roast garlic and make a nice smell together with lots of ideas for using the lovely stuff.

  

Smoked Garlic

I have actually smoked garlic myself and it’s not difficult if you are into smoking but it is easier still to buy it from your nearest interesting food shop.

Use smoked garlic wherever you would use un-smoked garlic but it is particularly good with potatoes, cheddar and strong beefy dishes.

Black Garlic

This is the best food “discovery” I have made in … years and years! It is wonderful stuff and I never expected a whole new ingredient at my age!

It is somewhat difficult to get hold of, for a while Tesco stocked it but usually I have it delivered from Amazon. Recently I learned that Sainsbury’s stock it but I don’t know if it is every store. I urge you, however, to get yourself some even if it’s not an easy thing to do, I don’t think you’ll be disappointed.

I have written a lot about this too, see …

~  Black Garlic
~  How to Use Black Garlic
~  “The latest ‘it’ ingredient in chefs’ kitchens”

Enjoy!

A Bit of Summer in the Fridge

On Wednesday 1^stMay (you probably remember it; this year’s summer) I picked some wild garlic and when I got it home washed it and puréed the leaves in my mini food processor together with some soft salted butter. See here for lots of delicious flavoured butter ideas.

I often find that the best way to clean out the food processor is to firstly wipe it out with something edible before washing it.  So having a couple of small crusts (a bit of ciabatta and a tiny crust of multigrain) I made some croutons – tear up bread, wipe out processor with it, spread on baking tray and, next time oven is on, bake till crisp and golden – good with soups, salads or as a nibble. More information on making croutons here.

I put the Wild Garlic Butter in the fridge and waited for inspiration.  So far this is what I have used it for …

Spicy Noodles with Salmon and Wild Garlic

I had a bit of salmon skeleton in the freezer.  You might think this is odd but we bought about half a salmon from which I cut some meal sized pieces and froze the remains for later use.  I just poached the skeleton for a few minutes and then carefully removed all the flesh from the bones – more than enough for me, in fact I finished it on toast the next day!  Economical or what!

I also had a few cooked noodles in the fridge so made myself a lovely sudden lunch. 

I just melted some wild garlic butter and tossed in the noodles and salmon till hot, added a squeeze of lemon and finished with an extra knob of garlic butter to keep my cholesterol up!

A Wild Garlic Hasselback Potato

I think I cooked hasselback potatoes about 30 years ago but if I did the details escape me.  A friend jogged my memory by putting a picture of one on FB so I thought I’d have a go and I have to come clean and say … it was not quite as nice as a jacket potato, in my opinion.  This is not to say that it was at all unpleasant, mind you.

~   Preheat oven to 400ºF/200ºC/180C fan/gas 6 

~   Wash a handsome baking potato and cut into thin slices BUT NOT ALL THE WAY THROUGH.  Leave them attached by about 10mm at the bottom.

~   Rub with olive oil, season and bake for about 30 minutes. 

~   Brush with Wild Garlic Butter and continue to cook till tender and crisp which could take up to another 30 minutes depending on the size of the potato.

I ate mine with salad, more wild garlic butter and a little freshly shredded Parmesan.

Crevettes in Lemon Ramsons Butter

We bought some reduced cooked crevettes yesterday and I have just eaten them warmed through in said butter together with a squeeze of lemon.  Yummy over rice.

‘Oss ‘Oss Wee ‘Oss

Yesterday I was lucky enough to go to ‘Obby ‘Oss in Padstow and it was utterly perfect weather (which was a surprise).

‘Obby ‘Oss is a strange and ancient pagan festival peculiar to Padstow celebrating May Day. My friend Carol lives in Padstow and we walked down through the woods into the town.

Even from there we could hear the traditional May Day Song which starts …

Unite and unite and let us all unite,

For summer is acome unto day,

And whither we are going we will all unite,

In the merry morning of May. 

Arise up Mr. ….. I know you well afine, 

For summer is acome unto day, 

You have a shilling in your purse and I wish it were in mine, 

In the merry morning of May

… and is sung round the town to get everyone (who isn’t already up – exciting times) awake and celebrating. This day is HUGE in Padstow and whilst the streets are packed it is amazingly uncommercial – just a wonderful celebration of summer.

This music is played continuously throughout the day and there is much spontaneous dancing in the streets.

This is the red ‘oss (‘obby ‘oss, of course, means hobby horse but as you can see there is no resemblance) which is the traditional old ‘oss, there is also a blue peace ‘oss who came into being after the First World War.

Anyhoo they dance to the rhythmic music around the steep streets and harbour of lovely old Padstow being constantly teased by a dancing “teaser”.

Beware of getting too close to the ‘oss because if he catches you under his skirts you will be pregnant within the year (I am not sure in these days of equality and PC if this also applies to boys) – fair enough this is a fertility rite!

That’s enough about ‘obby ‘osses.

Carol and I followed the red ‘oss for a while, sometimes it must get tired because occasionally the singers change pace, sing a slow song and the ‘oss slumps into a little sleep on the ground for a few minutes – roused by a hearty shout. 

 We then retired to Carol’s daughter Wendy’s lovely little Bed and Breakfast in the heart of the town, Cyntwell

Here we sat out in the sun eating crab sarnies, gorgeous homemade chocky cake and drinking some refreshing bevvies.

On the way back through the woods I picked wild garlic and it is my intention this year to make Wild Garlic Butter which I shall then use in a variety of ways.

In other news …

~ I have a red nose.
~ They must love a party in Padstow, I see that it was a year ago today that I saw my first Christmas advert.

How One Leftover leads to Another!

~  Menu  ~

Minestrone-ish Soup

Wild Garlic Bread

Glass of Red

This lunch was the first dish in a series of meals I made up  to use up leftovers.  Having grated a piece of Gran Padano down to the rind I decided that I would use the heel of the cheese to make some warming minestrone-ish soup.

Simple Minestrone Soup

1 small red onion – finely diced

about ¼ carrot – finely diced

1 celery stalk – finely diced

a smidgen of garlic – either paste or crushed

½ tbsp olive oil

½ tbsp tomato paste

150g canned chopped tomatoes

hot vegetable stock

100g cannellini beans

a heel of parmesan

a few veg of your choice (savoy cabbage is traditional)

~   Cook the onion, carrot and celery in the oil over medium heat till starting to caramelise.

~   Stir in the garlic and cook a few seconds more.

~   Add the tomato paste and cook a few more seconds more!

~   Stir in the chopped tomatoes and bring to a boil.

~   Now add enough vegetable stock to make a lovely soupy consistency.

~   Turn down the heat, cover and simmer till the vegetables are tender.

~   Remove from the heat and add the parmesan heel.  Cover and leave to steep for 20-30 minutes by which time the cheese should have done its work.  Remove the rind but stir in any cheese that has melted into the soup.

~   Return to a boil, stir in the cannelloni beans and any veg you might using, cover and simmer till the vegetables are to your liking.

I slathered some Ciabatta with Wild Garlic Pesto and toasted it to serve with the soup.  Unfortunately after making the soup I had half a container of white beans left so I made …

White Bean and Wild Garlic Dip

120g cooked or canned cannellini beans

4 or 5 well washed wild garlic leaves

A squeeze of lemon juice

A little olive oil

Sea salt and coarsely ground black pepper

~   Process together the beans and wild garlic and then with the processor running drizzle in the olive oil till a hummus like texture is achieved.  (Yes, as you will see from the photo I well a little too far!)

~   Season to taste with the lemon juice, salt and pepper.

As it happened I couldn’t eat all the hummus and so with an accumulation of leftovers I made …

Wild Garlic and Potato Soup

This was especially cunning of me because not only did I have some onions cooked my favourite way in the fridge I also had a modicum of leftover mashed potato, so this is what I did.

~ Gently heated the onions till warm and melty.
~ Stirred in the leftover mashed potato together with enough vegetable stock (Oxo) to make a soup consistency.
~ Turned down the heat, covered and cooked for about 10 minutes to meld the flavours.
~ Stirred in a handful of wild garlic leaves till wilted.
~ Tipped the whole lot into the food processor together with knob of clotted cream (but double cream, single cream, crème fraîche, milk etc. would work too) and puréed till smooth.
~ I then stirred in the leftover White Bean Hummus which gave a little texture.

That worked!  Sorry no photo, camera battery was flat.  I blame myself!

I ate the lot this time but if I hadn’t I was thinking of trying any leftover soup with bacon and cream as a pasta sauce!

Wild Garlic ~ Calloo, Callay!

Pin for when you find some wild garlic!

Wild garlic is frequently known as ramsons, formally as allium ursinum and occasionally and sometimes rather rudely as bear’s garlic, jack-by-hedge, buckrams, broad-leaved garlic, wood garlic, devil’s garlic, stinking Jenny and gypsy’s onions.  Some of these names don’t do it justice because It Is Yummy with a wonderful kind of a mild garlic-chive taste. 

Last year was the first time I had ever picked wild garlic and I was ecstatic!  Lovely, fresh, delicious and free food!  I have been looking forward to this year’s crop ever since and yesterday picked a carrier bag full.  

Freezing Wild Garlic

I stemmed and washed and dried the lot and then chopped it in my tiny food processor together with a thin drizzle of olive oil to help it.  I spooned the result into an ice cube tray and froze it tightly wrapped to stop other things in the freezer tasting garlicky.  Scroll down to the end of the post on ideas for using frozen wild garlic.

Wild Garlic Pesto 

I had too many chopped leaves for the ice cube tray so added walnuts and grated Gran Padano (as per my wild garlic pesto recipe) to the processor together with enough oil to make Wild Garlic Pesto.  I put the pesto in a clean jar,  topped it up with copious amounts of olive oil to keep the air out and put it in the fridge.  Scroll down to the end of the post on ideas for using wild garlic pesto.

Wild Garlic Vinaigrette

I couldn’t get every scrap of the precious stuff out of the food processor and you know how I hate waste so I added a spoonful of cider vinegar, a pinch of sugar plus salt and pepper and some more olive oil and made – Wild Garlic Vinaigrette (see here for lots more easy vinaigrette recipes). I poured this into a jug to dress my salad for dinner.

And so on …

The food processor still looked a little unfinished so, still hating waste, I wiped it out with a piece of salmon which was intended for my dinner.

The resulting meal tasted excellent but was strangely out of focus so doesn’t deserve to be seen!

And the leftovers?

Easy peasy, I munged together leftover salmon from my dinner last night, leftover mashed potato from my menfolks’ dinner last night and a teaspoonful of my Wild Garlic Pesto. I formed an admittedly large fishcake, pressed it onto a plate of panko, shallow fried till crisp and went for it.

How to use Fresh Wild Garlic …

~ Add the leaves and flowers to salads.

~ Garnish dishes with the flowers – they are very pretty!
~ Sprinkle chopped leaves onto all sorts of dishes.
~ Add to omelettes and scrambled eggs.
~ Keep the flowers in a vase on the kitchen windowsill amongst all the rest of the paraphernalia. Don’t worry, they don’t make a smell!

How to Use Frozen Wild Garlic …

~ Stir into soups and sauces, 

~ Add a cube when deglazing a pan to make a quick sauce for meat or fish.
~ Stir into polenta for the last few minutes of cooking.
~ Mash into potatoes.
~ Stir into risotto.

How to Use Wild Garlic Pesto …

~ Stir into mayonnaise.
~ Whisk in vinegar or lemon juice and more oil to make a great salad dressing.
~ Rub onto meat and fish as a marinade and leave a few hours before cooking.
~ Stir into Alfredo Sauce for a lovely pasta dish.
~ Just toss with freshly pasta for a yummy simple dish.
~ Drizzle over sliced tomatoes.
~ Garnish soup with a spoonful or a drizzle.
~ Spread into sandwiches and Grilled Cheese Sandwiches 

See Wild Garlic & Walnut Pesto here.

Please Click here to Tweet this to other hunter gatherers!

Pesto Recipe – wild garlic & walnut

I picked some more wild garlic yesterday and I’m going to get some more on Wednesday, I love the stuff so much I’d probably even pay for it if I had to!  With this bunch I made some pesto.

Wild Garlic Pesto

20g wild garlic leaves (well washed – you know what doggies are like in the woods!)

30g grated Parmesan

20g walnuts (hadn’t got any pinenuts but these worked really well)

75ml olive oil plus a bit more

~   Bung everything except the olive oil in the food processor and run on slow whilst gradually adding the 75ml of olive oil.

~   When finely chopped and mixed together up the speed a little and process to a coarse purée.

~   Taste and season.

~   Spoon into a clean jam jar, run a little extra olive oil on the surface to seal and put the lid on.  Keep in the fridge.

Pin for easy reference when wild garlic is in season!

This quantity makes Not Much!  Double up if you can.  Of course you could make normal pesto with basil and pinenuts using similar quantities.

Lots of ideas for Wild Garlic Pesto here.

After decanting it into a jar I scraped out the processor and spread the result on toast which I ate with fried tomatoes and cream cheese for lunch.

Today, as often happens, I had a modicum of leftover mashed potato in the fridge, the reason being that one large potato is not quite enough for my real man’s dinner and two are too much.   I decided to make a more-complicated-than-the-last-time wild garlic potato cake.  

I mixed two teaspoons of Wild Garlic Pesto into the mash, formed a little cake with a hollow in the middle into which I inserted a nugget of Boursin.  I shallow fried the potato cake in olive oil and, at the last moment, frazzled a little Prosciutto di Parma alongside it.  The cake had a creamy melting heart, the potato was savoury and delicious (umami-ish) and the ham was crisp and salty.  Ooooooh yum. 

I had a glass of red wine with lunch and have a confession to make in this regard.  I often mention red wine and nearly always drink the same one at home.  Sadly I’m not going to tell you what it is as it’s cheap and delicious and often sold out and I’m keeping it a secret – sorry. 

Wild Garlic – delicious free stuff!

The past few days have been splendid, as you probably know.   Whilst wandering about in the sun I was delighted to find wild garlic. or ramsons as they are more formally called, and picked a few handfuls. 

Here’s a picture of them growing in Padstow woods.

And here’s what I did with my wild garlic …

Penne Pasta in Wild Garlic Alfredo 

This is easy, just add shredded wild garlic to a simple Alfredo Sauce BUT I made it extra yummy.  My real man had a burger (homemade of course, I’m surprised you asked) topped with bacon, red onions and cheddar.  I always finish it in the oven and whilst doing this I crisply fried myself some breadcrumbs in the bacony fat which had bits of caramelised onion in it, thus making a delicious pangratatto!



My meal was seriously delicious (I’d have thought so even if I wasn’t such a bighead) and looked like this.

I also puréed some of the leaves together with olive oil, lemon juice and freshly and coarsely ground black pepper and marinated a piece of haddock in this for an hour or so then pan fried it and ate it with our first Jersey Royals of the season.

Lastly I mixed the remaining leaves with some leftover mashed potato and fried up a crispy cake to go with another piece of haddock cooked in bacon fat.  I hope I’ll be alright, re the bacon fat!

News from the future – see here for lots of ideas for using wild garlic.

In Other News

I had a lovely wiggly wander about Padstow; wiggly because I was walking around the hoards of people thronging the small harbour.

I had lunch at The Basement, on a street called Drang, with my friend Carol, she ate mussels …

… and I had a wonderful Monkfish Madras which was perfect in every way, in fact extra perfect as it had a surprise Onion Bhaji in the centre of it.  With this I drank my first, but certainly not my last, wine from Camel Valley; Bacchus, a fruity white wine which was gorgeous.

Thursday my real man and I spent on the beach at Porthcothan  just laying in the sun, reading, eating a picnic (fairly basic but nice), he spent some time in the sea with his surf ski and we explored the coves and rocky places. 

You know, the Caribbean is lovely but it’s hard to beat a Cornish beach when the weather’s right.  For a start the tide goes out So Far!  About half a mile the other day and the beaches are interesting with caves and rock pools and weathered rock formations.  We had a lovely time and I’m glad we’d already got a tan because a lot of people left the beach rather burnt.