Seasonal News and Recipes for Spring
About the same time as the Bluebells come out in the garden, these magic little blooms with long green leaves and starry white flowers also appear. When you brush and crush the leaves they smell of garlic. Yep, it seems they’re wild (well actually quite tame) garlic. I’m not sure how they arrived in my garden to begin with but I’ve always loved them, and they’re a perfect pairing with the Bluebells.
Inspired by Katia (@gourmandpixels) who told me tales of foraging for wild garlic to make pesto, I found recipes for Pickled Wild Garlic Flower Buds and Rainbow Chard with Fennel, Chilli, Wild Garlic and Rosemary on a lovely website theseasonaltable.co.uk. a journal of slow food and slow living from a small holding in rural England. The rainbow chard recipe inspired an orgy of online seed buying so I’ll have some of my own later on in the summer!
If it’s Autumn where you are, what seasonal goodies are you cooking up? Have you found anything interesting in your lockdown larder?
I managed to find a recipe for Wild Garlic pesto from riverford.co.uk that used ingredients I had to hand; Hazelnuts, Parmesan (hubby came up trumps with a tub of that ‘lasts forever’ stuff from the corner shop) salt, pepper, lemon and olive oil.
Wild Garlic
100g wild garlic
50g Parmesan grated
50g hazelnuts, skinned and toasted
olive oil
lemon juice, to taste
salt and pepper
Pesto
Place leaves in a blender. Blitz
Add Parmesan. Blitz some more.
Add Hazelnuts (or whatever nuts you’re using).
Blitz a bit more.
Add Olive oil a bit at a time until you’ve got the consistency you want. Add seasoning and lemon juice.
Voila.
Riverford have lots of recipes involving Wild Garlic. The pesto may not win prizes but it’ll do me! I even sacrificed some of the unopened flower buds to make a tiny jar of pickled wild garlic flower buds. They’re delicious on wilted spinach and a soft poached egg.
The Rhubarb meanwhile is growing very nicely. Well it was growing nicely but I’ve raided it twice already to work on recipes. At this point you’ll have to visualise an artfully posed image of some rhubarb stalks, that distinctive pink and green, with a few glistening water droplets. In the haste to get stalks from garden to oven I forgot to take any pictures.
Husband (who is fussy about cake) was happy and so was I. It didn’t come out pretty but it did taste good. I made the cake the day before yesterday and it’s pretty much all gone, so forgive the hasty image, it was the last piece! Sadly I didn’t get time to try a plant based version. This one by Allesandra at Cookpad looks worth a try. If I get a chance to perfect my vegan version I’ll post it here. In the meantime here’s my recipe for
Rhubarb and Pear
Almond Cake
With Optional Pear and Optional Rhubarb
If it’s not Spring where you are or you’re not a fan of Rhubarb you might get away with just doubling up on the pear.
160g Butter (or non dairy baking spread)
180g Sugar (I use half and half white and muscavado)
120g Self Raising flour
60g Almond flour
3 Small to Medium Eggs (or 3 tbs chia seeds soaked in water).
1/2 tsp Baking Powder
100g Rhubarb stalks cut into 2cm bits
1 Pear (optional) peeled, cored and cut into small cubes.
1 tbs Brown sugar (+ optional 1/3 tsp cornflour) + 5 tbs water
Set oven for 180 deg C and prepare a 20cm/8 inch round cake tin for baking.
Place Rhubarb stalks and Pear pieces in a small pan with the water and the 1 tbs of brown sugar. Bring to the boil, turn down immediately and simmer with a quick stir for about 1 minute. Turn off and allow to cool.
Measure both flours and baking powder into a bowl.
Cream butter and sugar. I’ve found the better the creaming the lighter the cake, a stand mixer with a creamer attachment is perfect.
When the mixture is light and well creamed add an egg, mix in throughly, then add a tablespoon of the flour mixture. Continue to alternate until all the eggs are in, then add the rest of the flour mix a spoonful at a time mixing in after each addition. The mixture should be of just about dropping consistency.
Dollop spoonfuls or tip out enough cake mixture to just cover the base of the cake tin. Remove the fruit from the pan with a slotted spoon and drop some of it around the mixture in the tin. Top up with the rest of the cake mix and drop the remaining fruit mix around the top. If the juice in the pan is very runny, quickly add the 1/3 tsp of cornflour, reheat until thick, and then drizzle randomly over the top of the cake mix.
Bake at 180 deg C for 50 minutes or until an inserted knife comes out clean. Allow to cool. Or not. Serve with whatever you like. Enjoy!
If you do get to try a plant based version let me know how it turns out.
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