Introducing... Eat Your Wild Garlic the Free DIY Zine

The second of my DIY Zines is now ready for you to print and read. This one is all about wild garlic. It has growing tips, picking tips and two recipes. One is for the Wild Garlic Crackers, seen on these pages before, and the other is for Wild Garlic Pasta which is exclusive to this zine. 

On the hob

They are two of my favorite recipes. And my two favorite Wild Garlic Recipes. We had the pasta last night after foraging some wild garlic on my way through town. It tastes amazing. Eating pasta you've made yourself feels indulgent and luxurious but really it's simple. You make a dough, leave it for a bit, roll it out and boil it. The actual hands on time is about 20 minutes.

On the plate

No matter what you make with it you should Eat Your Wild Garlic. To get a copy of the zine print off the A4 Version or the Letter Version and fold it up following the directions here. Then you'll have your very own copy of Eat Your Wild Garlic. 

Marsh Samphire

Although marsh Samphire (that's in the species Salicornia) is popping up more and more in shops I knew I'd never bother to try it until I found some growing myself. This week, deep in another part of Devon, I finally found some.

In the natural habitat

Marsh Samphire turns out to be everything I've ever been told it is. For starters it's better than Rock Samphire (Crithmum maritimum, so not related at all) as it tastes nothing like petrol. Instead it's a perky little vegetable with a salty taste. A really salty taste. It grows in salty marshes. It's like salt in a vegetable. I enjoyed nibbling on the raw tips while out for walks but when I got home I had to do something more with it.

In my natural habitat

Steamed for 7 minutes (because that's what it said to do in Edible Seashore) and served with a little olive oil and pepper. The almost unbearable saltiness it toned down leaving a delightful green. I don't know if I'll be buying it but I'll certainly be looking out for it on marshy walks.

Grow Write Guild Prompt #8: Write about the plant that best encapsulates the essence of summer.

When I was a kid summer started with the daises and daffodils turning the lacklustre playing field into something that would make the most hardened dinner lady smile. It marked the time when the playing field became something we could play on rather than stare at from the tarmac. It marked the countdown to the summer holidays.

Everything to me

But now I'm older, I'm wiser, I'm hungrier. My plant of summer is still a plant that's as common as muck (just like me). It slots itself into hedgerows, growing beautiful parasols of delicate white flowers. Seeing the bloom makes me happy. Smelling it, I know it's summer. Cooking the flowers into a cordial? Well then it's summer all year round.

This is my love note to Elderflower. You make my year Sweetheart.

[This post was written as a response to the 8th prompt of Gayla Trail's Grow Write Guild. Check it out.]

Tomato and Nettle Sauce

Nettles are crazy nutritious with 6g of protein per 100g and lots of stuff that's good for you like vitamin a, vitamin c, calcium and iron. They also sting like a bitch.

In fact stinging like a bitch is their defining characteristic. But it's worth it at this time of year (spring, early summer only. Later in the year they suck) to put on a pair of gloves and pick the top few leaves of the nettle to eat. They are delicious, crazy nutritious and don't sting once you soak them in water.

It occurs to me that I could call this Net Bol but I don't know if I want to put you through that

This recipe takes advantage of their strong flavour to cook them in a bolognese style sauce. I'd like to think I'd make this by going out in the morning, foraging for nettles, cutting some fresh herbs and then lazily cooking this sauce in the afternoon. A good weekend project. Actually because most of the cooking is inattentive it makes a good quick weekday supper while preping for Brownies or catching up on your drudgery cleaning. Okay so more like watching TV. No need to judge me.

Moving on...

Serve this one over spaghetti for extra inauthenticity but whatever pasta you have will work.

Tomato and Nettle Sauce
(serves two)

1 small onion, diced
1 clove of garlic, minced
1 small carrot, diced
a couple of teaspoons of olive oil
1 400g tin of chopped tomatoes
half a teaspoon each of fresh rosemary and thyme (chopped if you feel like it)
Salt and pepper
A big handful of young nettle leaves

Pop a large saucepan (use one with a lid!) on medium heat, chuck your oil in and add your onion, garlic and carrot. Cook for five minutes, until the veg is softened. You may need to stir and add a small amount of water to keep things from sticking

Add the can of chopped tomatoes, fill the can half way with water and add that to the pan as well

Just showing off my rosemary

Throw in the herbs and season with a good pinch of salt and pepper

Simmer with the lid on for an hour, stir every... whenever it occurs to you.

Remove the lid and cook for another 15 mins, adding a bit of water if it gets too dry

Wear gloves when measuring a big handful of nettles

While it's cooking roughly chop your nettles, wear gloves if you haven't soaked them.

When the 15 minutes is up add the nettles and cook, stirring often for another 10 minutes until the nettles are good and wilted.

Taste to adjust your seasoning, serve over past and enjoy.

Wild Garlic Crackers

There are two secret special ingredients in these crackers. The first is a really cool flour. You want flour that would make 'brown bread with bits in it' as we called it when I was growing up. Because we like trying different local flours the one I used for this was the Organic Maltstar Flour from Stotes Flour they describe it like this:

This is our Granary type flour. Made from wheat flour blended with malted wheat flakes, rye flour and malt flour. 

Other flours that would work are Doves Farm Malthouse or Barleycorn (for a lighter taste) but anything that's brown with bits in would do.

The other secret special ingredient is Wild Garlic. Your wild garlic shopping options are either grow it yourself or forage for it. I believe you can buy it from some grocers but it's not a usual thing. It's totally seasonal though so it's now or never (or next year)

Ingredients
5 or 6 leaves of Wild Garlic
220g of a Granary Type Flour
1/2 teaspoon of salt
1 tablespoon of olive oil
75ml water

Preheat the oven to 220 C

Finely chop the wild garlic

Mix together flour, salt, oil, and water in a bowl until the ingredients are just starting to come together.

Add the wild garlic and continue to form into a dough

Roll out. Use as much flour as you need to stop it sticking to the surface but don't go overboard, these crackers are better if the dough is slightly wet. You want to roll it out to the point where the dough is as thick as the bits in the flour.

Cut out. I used a pizza cutter and just made it into scruffy rectangles but you can do other shapes, no problem.

Transfer to a lined baking tray and bake for 10 minutes, until your edges are lightly browned.

Cool on a cooking rack and...

Eat!

Elderberry Cordial and The Fun Of The Forage

After gaining some extra foraging confidence from The Thrifty Forager it was time to go out and do something I've been meaning to do for a while now. Make. Elderberry. Cordial. Aside from having fabulous flowers that get made into cordial in my kitchen every spring (take a look at this spring's), they have wonderfully purple autumn berries. Just don't eat them raw, the cyanide might make you feel a bit ill.

I've always wanted to pick them but I always forget or don't walk past the trees at the right time. And why did I want to pick them? Well you can make a cordial out of them too and I've always wanted to try it. I picked the berries about ten meters away from the office where Stephen was sat working. I'm mentioning this partly to excuse not having a cute picking picture and also to show that foraging can happen in a town centre. I did get a few looks but curious 'she's mad' way, not in a threatening 'throw things because she is mad way' so I didn't really mind.

Very goth...

Coming home I made the cordial following the instructions Grow Your Own Drugs: A Year With James Wong and, as some didn't fit in the bottle, I had a small sample. I can't say I really made my mind up about it. One mouthful was present, the next a little astringent. One mouthful too strong, the next fell a little flat. Possibly it's a taste I'm going to have to get used to. My brain is like that sometimes, if a taste isn't what it's expecting it freaks out on me and revives all my old food issues. I'll have to try it again with Stephen around...

I Bought A Book: The Thrifty Forager

That moment where two things you love come together in one package? That moment is now. And I'm very happy. Earlier this month a book was published by Alys Fowler about foraging. For me at least that is very exciting. But how can we make it more exciting?



Well for one thing I could afford a copy. I saw it on Amazon and went to sniff a real life copy in town, just to flick through, see what information I had elsewhere and make an assessment on how desperate I am to get a copy. Very by the way. On my way to being a productive member of society I ducked inside the discount book shop just to see if they also had a copy. Just on the off chance. And I came out happy. It was £4.99 and I may be hard up but I did have a fiver in my pocket that day. Bliss.

Preserving the Floral Forage

This spring we didn't get much opportunity to forage but we did manage to get a decent harvest of flowers and as the elder flower is still out in force I'm sure it will continue. I tried my hand at preserving some of the flowers in a dandelion jelly (supposed to be a marmalade but I'm four years old and hate bits), a rose petal jelly and, elderflower cordial.

For the cupboard

Sloe gin, spelt, and samphire

Clare’s taking a break from the blog today, so it’s time for my first ever Vegan MoFo post.

A month ago I mentioned to a friend that we had made sloe gin for my parents last year. She remarked that she was also fond of it, so I promptly promised her a bottle. We went foraging last weekend and arrived back at the flat with a bag full of sloes and another bag full of rock samphire.

The recipe is simple: prick 200 grams of sloes with a fork, add 200 grams of organic sugar, and pour on 75 centilitres of gin. Give it a stir, and then put it into a bottle. This bottle should be bigger than the one the gin came in — we didn’t think about that and ended up tipping the spare gin down the sink (as neither Clare nor I drink alcohol).

I decorated the bottle with a wintry scene using gel pens, and made a cute gift tag which I tied to the bottle with some spare ribbon. It was well received.

Meanwhile, I used the samphire to make crackers. I pulled the leaves from the stem, ending up with about two tablespoons full, then put them in a sieve, rinsed them, and steamed them for ten minutes over a stock pot. After chopping them finely I mixed them with 150 grams of organic wholemeal spelt flour, half a teaspoon of salt, 75 millilitres of water, and two and a half tablespoons (about 40 millilitres) of olive oil. I rolled out the dough onto baking parchment to make a layer about two millimetres thick, and then baked them for twenty minutes at 200°C.

Sloe Hunt

Last MoFo we went out and had a good forage. I've learned a lot more about foraging since then and finding things has gotten a little easier but for this year's harvest I had to go back to the hedgerow we found so fruitful (literally, I suppose) last year. We've promised a bottle of sloe gin to our friends and, this being the first free day I've had for four weeks now, set out hoping there was some left in the hedge.

Rose hip Jelly

We collected these rose hips on a cheery autumn picnic but cheery autumn rose hips aren't at their best. They need bletting which is a fancy term for starting to go a bit yucky. We put them in the freezer to mimic the deep frosts and as soon as I remembered them it was time to go.

Daring Cooks Food Preservation Challenge

The September 2010 Daring Cooks’ challenge was hosted by John of Eat4Fun. John chose to challenge The Daring Cooks to learn about food preservation, mainly in the form of canning and freezing. He challenged everyone to make a recipe and preserve it. John’s source for food preservation information was from The National Center for Home Food Preservation. Find out what I did and get my recipe for Spicy Haw and Apple Pleather after the jump.

Pickled Garlic

Garlic season, for me, started with wet garlic. First in the box, then on the balcony and, of course, in much of what I ate. Wet garlic is garlic that is planted late (December on the balcony, though many of my books say early spring...) and so doesn't have the growing time to form cloves. In looks it's like the garlic equivalent of spring onion. It has a delicious fresh taste about it and I've heard rumours that it is nice raw. Although when I tried it my response was to wave at my mouth and go 'ohh ohh oh' if anything I think it's a bit more pronounced than the dried stuff.

Then came the fresh new seasons stuff. It has cloves but it isn't dry yet. I got mine from the supermarket. Next year, with any luck, the balcony. But this year it looked stylish in the supermarket and I knew I had a recipe for pickled garlic in Preserves so we bought some. Not the most thrifty thing to do but I was interested in preserving garlic in a way other than drying. So I did. With bay leaves foraged off a local tree and spices scraped together out of my cupbord. I now have this lovely amber brew sat in my pantry.

Of course the last lot of garlic we get is the standard dried stuff. Which can turn almost any dish into pure heaven. Garlic, it seems, was made for preserving in one way or another.

The Sweet Taste of Summer

So what have I been up to while Stephen has baked roll after roll after roll? Well eating rolls for one thing, also pizza. But I've also been experimenting with foraging and with preserving. Our flat has been filled with the most amazing smells. The nectary sweetness of elderflower and the pure sauciness of the Great British Strawberry.

The elderflower we've been picking up from walks around Cockington. The last two weekends we managed to get a bottle a time. This weekend should be much more productive, every elder in Torquay seems to be in flower. Even walking to my doctors this morning I saw rows of the buggers. And the first batch was so hard to find...

Aside from smelling delicious they make an excellent cordial for no more than the price of a couple of lemons and some sugar. The past two weekends have made me a complete convert to cordial making. It's a really easy method of preserving and there is nothing like a glass of fruity, sugary water to wake you up in the morning or if you are feeling a bit wobbly. It can even be used to make ice lollies.

A couple of punnets of Strawberries were then turned into a sugary treat, this time with all the water removed. I made a delicious fruit leather. Making fruit leathers is easy and charming, you end up with something far more beautiful than a stained glass window. Not to mention an easily packable fruity hit. I think I'm going to have to try taking some of this on every hike, canoe trip and camp I do this summer. Perfect portable energy.

I'm going to carry on making cordials and leathers out of every fruit I can find or buy cheaply. It's so much fun and so satisfying to put things up for those sugar deprivation moments.

Foraged Cupcakes

Or perhaps just the decoration was foraged as the seasons turn away from wild greens and into edible flowers. A vanilla cupcake with chocolate ganache topped with a hawthorn flower and lightly dusted with icing sugar. Cute and yummy.

The Last Of Springtime Foraging

The nettles are breaking into flower and the leaves of the wild garlic are looking wilted. The fantastic foraging of springtime greenery is nearly over for the year, at least around Torquay, but there is still a couple of weeks or so to enjoy pickings.


The first thing I've preserved this year is Wild Garlic Oil. A book I was flicking through and have since forgotten mentioned it (along with putting wild garlic in tomato sauce which was yum... I wish I could remember that books!) no recipe but not that hard to cobble together. I roughly chopped some wild garlic leaves and covered them with oil in a jar. Left in the pantry for two weeks it came out yesterday for a good strain, bottle and labelling.


Wild garlic flowers are out right now and they have a pleasant garlic taste and a show stopping look. Especially if you take more care with your salads than I do! Also in my salads are foraged garlic mustard leaves. Other offenders in that salad are home-grown rocket, oak leaf, salad bowl and baby chard leaves, croutons and some west country blue cheese that we picked up at a food fair.


And, of course, wild garlic (yes, it is rather a theme isn't it) makes an incredible garlic bread made with one of my home made baguettes. The sauce on the pasta is a basic tomato sauce with nettle leaves thrown in at the end until they are just wilted. And no, not stinging.

Flower Power

The Forage

I've foraged for dandelion flowers before. Last year I made a fowl tasting sore throat remedy to help me get through my endless colds. I put it in green tea to hide the taste. Eventually my taste buds must have told my throat to knock it off already. And that's how you cure the common cold. Revulsion.

So boiled to death and sugared up they taste awful but there is a well-known fact in our flat. If Alys Fowler says so we have to try it. So after watching her make dandelion fritters of this week's episode of The Edible Garden we really did have to.

Hers were dipped in pancake batter and fried so we did a twist on the traditional and used the (American style) pancake batter from Vegan with a Vengeance adapted slightly. The recipe is enough for around 15 dandelion heads which is a perfect for two people as a snack. Any leftovers can be used to make a tiny pancake.

Dandelion Fritters

For the batter:

• 40g plain flour
• 2 teaspoons vegetable oil
• 3 tablespoons water
• 75 ml soy milk
• a drop of vanilla extract
  

And:

• 15 dandelion heads
• icing sugar, for dusting

1. Whisk together the batter ingredients. Try to get it as thin as humanly possible. Or cheat. We use the whisk attachment on our mini blender.

2. Heat the pan with a little oil test that it is warm enough by dropping a bit of batter in. It should sizzle.

3. Holding the flower by the green back dunk it in the batter and splat it into the frying pan, yellow down. Do about half the flowers at once.

4. Once the bottom is browned, which should take no more than two minutes, flip over. You may need to push it down a bit with the spatula to cook evenly.

5. Once the other side of the fritter is browned remove from the pan and cook the other half in the same way.

6. Dust with icing sugar and eat.


The Pansy Problem

This pansy was supposed to a violet. I went shopping for violets. We walked up to the local B&Q and Focus. We comparison shopped for violets. I decided on the basic violets being cheaper and a mix of colours. I came home with pansies placed on the wrong shelf. Oz. I planted them anyway, fully prepared to resent them. But I love the colour of this one, and it's velvet soft petals. So perhaps pansies aren't so bad. Violets next year though.


The Promise

But by far the most exciting flowers we get are the ones that turn into food. There are a few strawberry flowers poking up right now and masses of black current. I know food plants aren't supposed to be beautiful and you are supposed to hide them away in a plot or patch rather than a garden proper but come on... who can look at this and not be excited. And who can say it isn't beautiful.

First Forage of the Season

When I saw that Riverford were selling their Wild Garlic I thought it was about time to drag Stephen to my favorite patch to see if the young leaves were in. Not quite up to last Aprils lushness yet but a few plants were ready for the harvest.

As the plants are young it is important to be extra careful. One or two leaves from each plant quickly adds up to a nice amount but without doing irreparable damage. It's important to be a responsible picker - trying to keep to paths, not talking an entire plant - both for the local environment and for the forager who hopes for a continuous supply.


I also helped myself to some of the young nettle tips we found. Returning form Cockington Supermarket I cooked up a simple, classic tea of pasta with wild garlic pesto (recipe on link above) I'm also going to try a recipe I have for nettle pesto once I'm feeling brave enough to get stung again.

See also: weekly crocus picture from the purple tub.


Post submitted to: Grow Your Own #40

If it can't be roasted I don't want to know...

As Vegan MoFo fades away and I'm left wondering what to do with myself now I don't have to arrange my days around blogging. (I know, I need a job) I'm mainly going through the Vegan Lunchbox archive and over analysing carrot cake.

What to feed myself though, that has an easy answer. I'm continuing in my craving for all things roasted. Such as roast segments of delica squash (possibly the closest you can get to the taste of candy floss in vegetable form), carrots and potatoes. Served with a nut cutlet and a blob of tasty but not photogenic saucy haw ketchup.

I know, try explaining that to your Mum. It's quite innocent though. A ketchup made from foraged haws. You know, the fruit of a hawthorn. I'm digging myself into a hole here aren't I?

Food for free, kitchenwear at Disney World prices.

Now that this weekends foraging scores have been put to use on my hair and in my tummy and store cupboard it's time to report back. I had some of the delicious rosehip syrup on pancakes for lunch today and it was delicious. The taste is slightly spicy, slightly earthy, accompanied by a hell of a lot of sugar. Really, very yummy.