I’m on a roll with the foraging for wild food thing – even if that foraging extends no further than our back field at the moment…
So I promised you wild garlic and spinach soup – and I’ve half-delivered. I went out this afternoon and picked a lot of wild garlic leaves (after checking carefully first that they were in fact wild garlic, and not something poisonous and similar-looking, like lily of the valley…), then I started worrying the flavour wouldn’t be robust enough to stand out against the spinach. So I just went for it, and made straight wild garlic soup. I made up the recipe, and it seemed to work fine.
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Wild garlic soup
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300g wild garlic leaves
1 litre boiling water
2 tbsp sunflower oil
2 vegetable stock cubes
One onion
Four medium sized potatoes
½ tsp mustard powder
I sautéed the onion in a little sunflower oil, threw in the water, in which two stock cubes had been dissolved, then the four potatoes, diced. When the potato was soft – after about 15 minutes – I threw after it the spinach, stirred until it was wilted (about 5 mins), added the mustard powder, then blended with a hand blender. Finally, I strained it – although I’m not sure about that. I might go back and put back the bits I’ve strained out when it’s time to eat it. I have a feeling I’ve strained out a lot of the goodness.
It’s a beautiful colour, as you can see, and, being mainly foraged food, was extremely good value for money! I’m not sure how long wild garlic lasts – but I’m hoping it might still be around when my potatoes are ready for harvest?
I know next to nothing about plants and gardening, as will quickly become evident reading this blog. But I’ve got to start somewhere, haven’t I?
PS: While I was taking pictures in the garden I realised our laburnum, and the rhododendrons next to it, were alive with bees – like a monster machine. It made me so happy, because the decline of the honeybee has obviously been really worrying (see www.ibra.co.uk for more information on this). It’s lovely to see them around and active…
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