Nature’s Larder

There are lots of free foods available in nature – and I’m lucky to have a prolific patch of one of them,  wild garlic, near my house. Some of my neighbours may have  spotted me a few weeks ago heading into the woods armed with my basket and wondered ‘what is she up to now?’ ! I was simply harvesting  a large bunch of delicious wild garlic…

I used some of the leaves in a mixed salad and more wilted into pasta but the majority of it was transformed into delicious garlic pesto.

And this is how easy it is:

• First wash the garlic leaves in salted water (to kill off any unwanted protein!!) and then rinse and dry in a salad spinner.
• For approx 150g leaves, you need to whizz 100g parmesan and 100g cashew nuts in the food processor until it looks like breadcrumbs.

• Add 1 large garlic clove (roughly chopped) and a pinch of salt .
• Then add the wild garlic leaves and pulse.

• Pour in enough rapeseed  oil to get to a ‘wettish’ mix (sorry it’s hard to quantify this bit!) and Hey Pesto! you’re done!
• Pour the  pesto into clean sterilized jars and make sure the top is covered with additional oil before sealing.

These quantities should yield 3-4 jars of Wild Garlic Pesto.

The pesto is delicious with pasta, on pizzas, as a dip…..We use it on parmesan shortbreads topped with goat’s cheese as one of our canapés.

ps you can substitute other herbs such as basil, coriander or parsley for all or part of the wild garlic.