Wild Garlic Recipes

With Wild Garlic now in season we've had some delicious recipes shared with us.  You'll find it in woodlands, fields and roadsides. It is best eaten in early spring  - whilst it is at its most tender!

I hope you get a chance to do some foraging - it's great fun!!

Wild Spring Risotto

By Chris Westgate

Heavenly Hedgerows

2 large handfuls of nettle (spring tips are best)

20g Wild garlic 

100g butter

1 red onion

4C chicken or veg stock

100g grated Parmesan

1/2C white wine

2C risotto rice

1/4C mint

Finely chop the mint, nettles and garlic, put to one side.

Finely chop and fry the onion. Add the rice and gradually (1/2 a cup at a time until absorbed) add the stock (stirring constantly) When there is 1 cup of stock left, add the wine, nettles, garlic and mint. Finally at the end of cooking add the Parmesan and stir.  Serve immediately.

White beans with wild Garlic sauce

By Sue Currie

Netherton Foundry

400g cooked white beans (cannelini, haricot, butter beans - whatever you've got!)

200ml white wine

200ml chicken or vegetable stock

1 onion, sliced

1 dstsp grain mustard

100ml single cream

1 large handful Wild garlic, washed and chopped finely

Salt and pepper

Put the wine and stock in a pan and bring to the boil.  Simmer until reduced by half.

Gently fry the onion in rapeseed oil, with a knob of butter, until translucent and soft

Add the onions and mustard to the reduced stock mixture and stir well.  Add the cream and warm through.

Toss in the Wild garlic, season with salt and pepper.

Serve - with crusty bread, sausages, lamb chops or a nice piece of fish........... or any other combination that takes your fancy!

Nettle and Wild Garlic soup.

By Catherine

Cyril's Soap

Large knob butter
1 onion, chopped
1 medium potato (optional, but I think it thickens the soup up a bit) chopped
200g young nettle leaves, chopped
Couple handfuls Wild garlic , chopped
1 litre stock.
Melt butter and soften onion. Add potato, nettle and Wild garlic . Sweat for about 3 or 4 mins add stock and cook until all soft. About 30/40 mins. Allow to cool slightly and then whiz up in blender! Serve with crusty bread!

Wild herb dumplings

By Catherine

Cyril's Soap

100g flour
50g suet
Nettle leaves
May leaves
Dandelion leaves
Dock leaves
Cleavers (sticky grass)
Wild sorrel
Water

Use a couple handfuls of the above mixed herbs. Finely chop. Mix flour and suet and add herbs. Add water to make a dumpling mixture. Form into balls and add to spring/summer stews!

Why Livestock are important

With the pressure of feeding an ever growing population it has been suggested that livestock are a burden on the food chain.  The United Nations estimates that food supply needs to increase by 70-100% by 2050.  There are even some who suggest that going vegetarian would solve world hunger.  There is no doubt we need to do something, but is this the solution?

Presently a third of the world’s cereal harvest is fed to farm animals and for every 100 calories of cereals eaten by livestock only 30 calories of food is generated in the form of meat, milk and eggs.  It is estimated that if this cereal was used for human consumption it would feed 3 billion people.   

However, the question is more how we farm our livestock.  Factory farming often expounded as the solution to producing food more intensely is in fact highly resource intensive.  It means the livestock rely heavily on the type of cereals that would otherwise go into the human food chain. This is bonkers!  What’s more since the start of modern farming we’ve lost about a third of the world’s top soil.  This is one of our most valuable resources, without it we cannot grow anything.  Most of our fertilisers, pesticides and herbicides come from oil and this is very calorie inefficient.

If our livestock are raised in more natural conditions then they become an asset.  Many livestock can thrive in landscapes not suitable for raising crops and they naturally feed on things people would not want to eat.  Sheep on a moorland, pigs through a woodland or chickens in our own backyards recycling our food waste.  Also livestock effectively through their metabolism produce fantastic natural fertilisers for the soil and help to improve our top soil and increase the sustainability of the land. 

The key is to place the right livestock in the right place.  In fact the Shropshire sheep, once close to extinction, has found a new application.  It is one of the few animals that eats exclusively grass and has been used to great effect by tree growers and vineyards to keep the grass down, saving the growers time and money in maintenance.

Do livestock have a place in an ever stretched planet?  Yes, a crucial one.  Not in inefficient, intensive systems but in a more natural environment, earning their keep through the food and soil fertility they leave behind.  Would you want to see a landscape with no animals in it?