Wild Garlic pesto!

I wrote back in April 2015 about making Wild Garlic Pesto so it is high time it merits another post!

I'm presuming you all know about Wild Garlic?  If not, it grow around this time of the year.  The leaves are point, spear-shaped and are this shade of green.  The flowers are a delicate, small white one and it usually grows in woodland areas, shady but not too much and often by water in my experience.  How do you know what it is?  Well, if you pick the top off a leaf and smell it, you will smell that delicious garlicky scent!  The only other two things that look like it are the NOT TO BE EATEN Lords and Ladies or Lily of the Valley and neither of those smell of garlic.

Wild Garlic from 2015

I was introduced to it back in 2015 by my Sussex-based friend E. She taught me to make a Walnut and Wild Garlic leaf pesto.

Here is the one we made.

My first 'supervised attempt'

I also made it at Easter 2016 after finding a patch in Allenbanks in Northumberland but with the more traditional pine nuts that time.
This year, when I saw my Stepmum had wild garlic in her Organic veg box, it reminded me that at Easter time, Wild Garlic could be found in Northumberland and I vowed to search for it and make some this Easter holiday.  In fact, I may have bored CBC and his Mum by keeping saying that!

To my delight, I actually found 3 separate patches of wild garlic on three separate walks so I collected it on all three, with the larger quantity being collected on our final walk last Saturday.  I was very glad to have been carrying along an old Chicory bag from Belgium so I was able to shove more and more Wild garlic as we encountered more patches on our walk (it's important not too take too much from one patch if it is limited as it is an important source of food for wild animals)

I ended up with about 250g of it!

When I returned home to Essex, I was ready to make some.  However, we had a whole bag of Pistachios that had been sitting open on the work top for a while and I had heard that you can make pesto with any nuts so it seemed a good idea to finish these up. In addition, I had purloined one of the dozen almost-finished bottles of olive oil from my Mother in Law's house which I knew the bottle of which would end up in the bin, so I grabbed that. I had some lemons in the fridge anyway and it only remained to buy some Parmesan.

I used THIS recipe but using less Olive oil. I began by blending the nuts. WARNING: wear ear-muffs, the sound is deafening!

You basically blend the nuts, wild garlic and parmesan and then add oil in and then lemon juice and salt and pepper.  I used a recipe with only a little pesto.  I probably should have used some more but as long as you 'seal' the surface with olive oil, it should keep.   The good thing is that you can freeze it so I put it into two plastic containers and one glass jar (after thinking that originally I could freeze glass jars with shoulders...) and it made a good amount.

So far we have had 3 meals for two with it. 

The first meal was Veggie spaghetti which did us both for two large meals and then we cooked another batch of the same on Friday.

Finally, tonight, after visiting Waitrose and buying some lovely Scotch Trout fillets (they were on special offer from the fresh counter which I bought 4 of, stuffed into my own container), I spread the pesto over the fish and put it in the oven.  I still had a few Wild garlic leaves left so I chopped those up and put them into the rice. We served it alongside Leeks, Broccoli, Courgette and Pak Choi.

It was delicious!

I recommend trying to find a patch.  Now I now where there is some in Northumberland, I just need to find some in Essex. Mum did give me a Wild-Garlic plant last year which happily came up again this Spring but since it only consists of two leaves, I'm leaving it to grow for a few years!

Who's up for making Wild garlic pesto then?

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