WILD GARLIC BUTTER

Thursday night's supper was Mattie's foraged risotto with fennel, wild Alexanders and the first of the wild garlic from the Heath, served with fennel seed sausages. Dribble and drool from a true hedgerow-er.

So, you can imagine how excited I was stumbling upon a wood of young wild garlic leaves on my evening walk today. I took a few stems - no flowers yet - put one in my mouth BOOOOM and saved the rest for the kitchen. One small bite makes for a fierce after-burner on the taste buds. You don't need much.

Home and desperate to use the leaves before they wilted, I chopped the leaves with parsley into a pan of melted butter and let it infuse to be poured over lightly blanched purple-sprouting broccoli...

WILD GARLIC and PARSLEY BUTTER

ingredients

200g farmhouse butter
handful of fresh parsely, chopped
10-15 leaves of wild garlic, chopped

Melt butter, and chop in the herbs. Rest off the heat for two minutes to infuse. Use wet or...

Cool the leftover wild garlic butter in a glass lined with baking parchment. Pop it in the fridge. When the butter has solidified you can slice it into mashed potato, make a parsley sauce to pour over hot ham or spread it over a warm sourdough...

Freeze it, still in the parchment, for melting at a later date.

Sad to freeze it away? Take a whiff of my coat pockets and you'll be carrying eau-de-garlique on the end of your nose for hours...

WILD AND WONDERFUL

In celebration of last month's wild garlic - now on it's last legs - guest blogger, Matilda Moreton, shows us how it's done with some snaps of her foraging finds and her wild garlic pesto:

Now that spring is truly upon us, hail storms and all, you have the opportunity to gather the first of this year’s bounteous wild harvests on Hampstead Heath …

Wild Garlic (Allium Ursinum), also known as Ramsoms, is not hard to identify - it is unmistakable by its smell. The all-pervasive whiff of garlic that follows you through the woods might daunt you, but in fact the leaves can be used in large quantities as the taste is not as strong as the smell.

Take a look in the damp, shady parts of the Heath, along walls and hedgerows, beside streams or ditches. The plants are also distinguishable by their flowers - umbels of bright white stars that shine out from the dim woodland carpet. You will have to wait a few weeks for the flowers but the broad floppy leaves are just appearing now in great quantities and will last through till May.

For my wild garlic feast this year I was on one wheel in between Easter trips here and there and did not have many ingredients to hand, so decided to scrunch and chop the leaves and bottle them down in olive oil to be enjoyed on my return. Here, the essence is to hold the tip of the knife down hard with the left hand and chop the pile of leaves like crazy with the right, stopping before the garlic has turned to pulp. Hey presto - pesto! The nuts and parmesan are entirely optional – the main point being only to preserve the garlic for later.

I also did just have time to make a fresh lunch of wild garlic toast that was greeted with applause by hungry travellers. Just back from France, we happened to have a stash of the delectable grey Guerande salt, that my friends in Brittany had pressed into their pat of butter - so once the garlic leaves were chopped up they were squidged into the butter with some of the magic grit and spread on toast – et voila – the best things are so simple…

Crunchy garlic flower salad

1 crunchy cos or romaine lettuce

1 handful of chopped assorted wild garlic leaves

A few small leaves of garlic mustard

1 handful of assorted garlic (and garlic mustard) flowers

1 crunchy cucumber

A dash of blue cheese perhaps?

And highly recommended with fish on Friday!

THANKS MATTIE!

PUFF THE MAGIC MUSHROOM

Recovery time.

Bestival is over and I am catching up on much needed sleep in a big bed with duvet and mattress, a far cry from achy backs in the morning, no-pillow-neck-crunch and grass in the sleeping bag.

This time of year is perfect for body and mind rehabilitation. Shuffling about with half open eyes suits the autumn light; each day lived through the lens of a Polaroid camera with warm orange light and slightly blurred edges. It all brings back a comforting nostalgia of bonfire smoke, apple crumble in the oven, feet by the fire and walks in a warm wind. This year's forecast has hit the
nail on the head for encouraging that oh-so-sickly word 'cosy' to stream back into our vocabulary.

Today has been one of those 'cosy' days. A warming Mumsoup, with hot bread and cheese for lunch, followed by a walk in the fields at a leisurely pace, stealing berries from bushes and no doubt, this evening lighting the fire whilst tucking into one of Monty Don's garden recipes. It has reached the season when it is considered perfectly OK to stock up on fuel for the winter; baggy clothes and big jumpers hiding the extra insulation you have worked so hard to build up in preparation for Arctic winds and sideways snow. Well almost...

Perhaps I am making up too much for the glut of my next recipe. But it is only right to be indulgent when you discover two ginormous Puff Balls beneath your feet, eager to be plucked from the grass and appreciated for all that they are. The Giant Puff Ball, otherwise known as Langermannia gigantea, is a rare and underestimated beauty which, unknown to many, can be delicious fried up in a saucepan with garlic and cream and parsley. With it's strange shape, white flesh, stiff skin and spongy texture, it looks less like a member of the mushroom family and more like a ball of freshly formed mozzarella.





Bizarre fruits of the earth, but these ring all bells. Serve on its own, with a fry up or throw chopped puff ball into risotto for a delicate version of risotto ai funghi.


In this instance, I am going to show them at their most simple.

Fried Puff Ball with bacon, garlic and cream.
SERVES 2-3
400g puff ball, freshly picked, roughly chopped (This may seem like a large amount but it shrinks massively)
25g butter
2 rashers of smoked bacon. roughly chopped

1 clove of garlic, crushed
40ml double cream

Melt the butter in a saucepan over a medium heat. Add the chopped bacon and fry until brown. Throw in the chopped puff ball and keep stirring it so that it turns a golden brown colour. Add more butter if necessary, but the puff ball will become moist the more it is fried. Add the garlic and stir in.
This tastes fantastic just as it is without the cream, and I would recommend to keep it like this if serving it with a fry up. If the cream appeals to you, then let the mixture cool slightly before pouring it in. The cream will turn slightly brown because of the butter, but this adds to the earthiness of the recipe, I think.

Mouthwateringly good! Savour this, it may be the only one you find.
Now it is back up North for me. Back to baked beans and regular mushrooms.
Perhaps the Yorkshire Dales will surprise me with a treat or two to jazz up old leftovers?

BRAMBLES AND BLACKBERRIES

Late August, given heavy rain and sun
For a full week the blackberries would ripen.
At first, just one, a juicy glossy clot
among others, red, green, hard as a knot.
You ate the first one and the flesh was sweet
Like thickened wine: summer's blood was in it
Leaving stains upon the tongue and lust for
Picking. Then red ones inked up and that hunger
Sent us out with milk cans, pea tins, jam pots,
Where briars scratched and wet grass bleached our boots.

This extract from 'Blackberry Picking' by the Irish poet, Seamus Heaney, for me sums up the last weeks in August with every single word. Whether laden with empty bowls waiting to be filled, heading out on a "can't-come-home-until-we-fill-to-the-top" mission, or stopping at every bush, slowing the power walking down, resulting in bored and frustrated dogs.

There are endless opportunities for this bountiful berry. Jam. Pie. Crumble. Fool. Compote. Sprinkled on Yogurt. Summer pudding. But there is one new discovery for me that tops it off and hits the spot: a recipe found in the August 2009 edition of Waitrose Food Illustrated, slightly altered and loved loved loved by my niece and nephew.

The original recipe by Mark Price uses ripe plums, at their best at this time of year. Thanks to our garden, we had these too - and used them for a tangy alternative to the sweet blackberries.



Blackberry and Yogurt muffins.

Makes 30 mini muffins or 15 large ones
Prep: 15 minutes
Cook: 25 minutes

115g Unsalted butter
300g Self-raising flour
1/2 tsp Bicarbonate of soda
1/4 tsp Salt
250g Caster sugar
250ml Natural Yogurt
2 Eggs
200g freshly picked Blackberries
(for plum recipe:
300g chopped plums
3/4 Ground ginger
2 stem ginger balls, finely chopped)

Preheat the oven to 190 degrees C. If you are making mini muffins, use the non stick plastic cases, laid out on a baking tray, which work brilliantly. If making large, line a baking tray with muffin cases, or for a beautiful rustic look, adopt Waitrose's idea of using squares of baking paper (tying them round the middle with string at the end - it looks fantastic).

In a saucepan, gently melt the butter; set aside to cool slightly.

Sift the flour, bicarbonate of soda, (ground ginger) and salt into a large mixing bowl. Add the sugar, mix thoroughly and make a well in the centre.

Add the yogurt, eggs (and ginger) to the pan of butter and whisk together.

Pour half the mixture into the dry ingredients: combine quickly using a wooden spoon. before mixing in the rest, add 150g blackberries. Don't over mix - any lumps will keep the muffins light.
Spoon into the muffin cases and top with the remaining blackberries.

Bake for 20-25 minutes, until golden brown and risen. cool in the tins/ cases for a few minutes before transferring to a wire rack.

Delicious!

CREDITS:


Extract from 'Blackberry Picking' by poet, Seamus Heaney. The whole poem can be found in Opened Ground: Selected Poems 1966-1996


Original 'Spiced plum and yogurt muffins' recipe by Mark Price, taken from Waitrose Food Illustrated, Page 74. August issue 2009

INTERESTING FATHER FACT OF THE DAY:

There are now 88 species of bramble growing on the Isle of Wight.

Thank goodness for that!

QUICK FISH

Unable to go to Weymouth Seafood festival last weekend, I have been on a mission for fish. Instead of standing in the rain under cover of fish markets and devouring the fresh flavours of the Dorset coast, I have been rummaging in the freezer at home - just as wet and cold, but without the wellies.


A recipe I managed to whip up by scavenging from larders, fridges and freezers - all ingredients dangerously near the sell-by-date (nothing like building up the immune system)- SEARED SCALLOPS, ROASTED BABY PLUM TOMATOES AND SMOKED HAM, WITH GARLIC AND CHILLI MASH. Quite a catch for a Sunday night supper for one...

Serves 2 (more polite and less greedy this way)
Cooking time: 24 mins

8 frozen scallops, de-frosted.
10 baby plum tomatoes, halved
3 leftover slices of smoked ham, cut into strips.
3 large potatoes.
Spoonful of English Provendor Co. Very Lazy Red Chillies
1 large garlic clove finely chopped.
Large pinch of Oregano.
2 glugs of Olive Oil.

First, defrost the scallops if frozen.
Put the tomatoes and ham into a baking tray. Drizzle olive oil over the top and sprinkle with Oregano. Place in the oven at 190 degrees C for about 20 minutes, until the tomatoes are soft and juicy and the ham is crisp.
Meanwhile, boil the potatoes, until soft.
When the potatoes are done, the tomatoes should be too. Leave them to rest a bit in their baking tray.
Place the rest of the olive oil in a frying pan, and carefully drop in the scallops, giving them two minutes on each side, so they have a golden glaze. While you are watching the scallops -no need to touch them while they are cooking, unless to turn them - mash the potatoes until smooth, and add the garlic and chilli.

Serve the scallops on top of the tomatoes and ham - their juices should be the perfect marinade/sauce for the scallops and potatoes.

Need I say more?

Yes. YUM