· James Torr · Personal · 1 min read
Got the tail end of the wild garlic season. Bit more crud to clean off but picked 3kg or so in under half an hour. Pesto style paste. 2 garlic: 1 nuts: 1 cheese, 1% salt. Picked up a lovely block of manchego at Ovetts at and subbed in almonds and cashews for the usual pine nuts. Jarred and straight into the freezer for use in salads, pasta, sauces, stews etc throughout the year.
in a little series of urban "edibles". This is prickly lettuce, Lactuca serriola, closest known wild relative of cultivated lettuce, L. sativa. Wikipedia describes it as having a "fetid" odor. That doesn't exactly sound appetising.
This year I'm fermenting my wild garlic. I won't do a long ferment, just enough to stop it going bad in the fridge too quickly, which has been a concern in the past. I used to make pesto with cheese and pumpkin seeds, then just added salt and oil to finely ground wild garlic and froze. Making this for a ferment is a very simple process. Wash, squeeze dry, shred (I used a mixer, but it won't take long by hand), weigh.
Wild garlic time! Gonna play around a bit with gentle fermentation for these, but for now, steamed on top of rice with some beef bits from a recent stock, micro-teamed then grilled leeks, broccoli, parsley on top of rice. Sauce is chicken stock, tare (ramen seasoning with soy, msg, salt?), chili oil and some pork chasu drippings. Yum.
Foraged sumac. Not much out this time of year apart from sloes and rosehips. First time processing these, around about 10 quite large buds filled a jar, took about 1hr total to get through.