Ways With Wild Garlic
My favourite wild food now in abundance so I thought a post on ways with wild garlic was just the thing. This is not a comprehensive post on the uses of wild garlic but just three simple ways to persevere, ferment and pickle wild garlic. There are many other ways with wild garlic from oils, to freezing, drying and making powders and adding to salt for wild garlic salt.
Wild Garlic Pesto
The first thing I tend to make with wild garlic is pesto, I generally use hazelnuts in mine but in these crazy lockdown days, I could not get any so it was mixed nuts a mix of walnuts, hazel, pecan and almonds.
Ingredients
100g of wild garlic
50g nuts
50g grated Parmesan cheese
Olive oil
Salt and Pepper to taste
Lemon zest and juice to taste.
Method
Thoroughly wash the leaves and roughly chop or tear and place in a blender, pulse to chop, add your grated Parmesan and pulse again this will break down the leaves. Next, it is the nuts, you can toast and deskin them and never bother myself when adding the nuts you will want to have your olive oil on hand as you blitz the nuts add your oil gradually to get the consistency you want. Season with salt and pepper and the lemon zest and juice to taste. I portion mine often into large ice cube trays and freeze, some I place in a jar and the top just covered in olive oil, this will keep in the fridge for several weeks. This goes really well with fish, meat and is great with pasta or spiralized vegetables.
Fermented Wild Garlic
Lacto-fermentation is the process that produces traditional dill pickles, kimchi, and real sauerkraut, among other fermented delights. This simple fermentation process requires nothing more than salt, vegetables, and water—no canning, no fancy equipment. Traditional Lacto-fermentation involves submerging vegetables in a brine solution— salt and water. In stage two of Lacto-fermentation, the Lactobacillus organisms begin converting lactose and other sugars present in the food into lactic acid. This method of preserving foods has gone on for thousands of years.
Ingredients
1 kg wild garlic
1 Tbsp sea salt (not iodised table or cooking salt)
Method
Thoroughly wash the garlic preferably in filtered water as tap water does affect the fermentation process. Roughly chop the leaves and stalks and place in a bowl in layers on each layer sprinkle with salt until all the plant matter is in the bowl and salt. Massage the salt into the leaves until you start to release the waters from the plant, this along with the salt creates the brine, keep going until the leaves are submerged in the juices. Place a plate on top and weigh down and set aside for 24 hours. check occasionally to ensure it is under the water.
Ferment
After 24 hours place into a Kilner type jar or fermentation jar, you need to ensure that the plant matter is submerged during the fermentation process you can do this by using fermentation glass weights that fit your jar or a ziplock bag with water in. Ferment for around a week and then place in the fridge where it will keep for months.
Fermented wild garlic buds
This is, without doubt, the easiest of all you simply take garlic buds a sterile jar and a 2% brine. Weigh out your garlic buds, make a 2% brine solution so for example if you had 100g of garlic buds you would brine with 2g of salt to 100g of water to cover the buds. When I do mine I slice red onion and place on top of the buds these act as the weight that keeps the buds below the brine solution. You can pickle the buds as well, simply make up your favourite pickling mix and cover the buds another simple way to preserve your Ramsons.
