Sunday 19 April 2009

Garlic Day – Wild garlic pesto recipe

P4180041 Following on from Damson Day, today marked Garlic Day. Wild garlic is just starting to come into flower, and like Damson Day, Garlic Day seems to celebrate the beginning of the season. We have many pockets of wild garlic, in slightly damp, wooded areas in the lanes around us. One, which is just off of the route I drive through each day, is ideal for stopping at on my way home to grab some leaves to add to a salad.

Using the wild garlic l gathered yesterday, and some from closer to home, I made a super-quick wild garlic pesto. I made this pesto into a creamy sauce, added some left-over chicken and served it between homemade sheets of pasta with the wild garlic flowers pressed in dough. A very ‘garlicky’ meal to celebrate the day!

Pesto recipe

Ingredients:

15gr wild garlic leaves

5gr fresh basil leaves

15gr parmesan, chopped into small cubes,

P419007715gr pine nuts

70ml olive oil

Salt and freshly ground black pepper

Method:

  1. Roughly chop, or rip, the garlic and basil leaves.
  2. Put the cheese and nuts in a magimix for a few seconds until both are chopped.
  3. P4190080Add the leaves and blitz until all the ingredients are combined.
  4. Add the olive oil and the salt and pepper and blitz for a few seconds.
  5. Using a spatula, transfer the pesto into a jar and top up with more oil so that mixture is covered.

9 comments:

  1. Ooooh, I am not a big fan of traditional pesto but I bet I would love that. Garlic is one of my favorite flavors.

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  2. I've never seen a wild garlic - how neat! The pesto looks wonderful!

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  3. This looks good. We only managed to get one batch of wild garlic this year - I need to find a secret patch for next year :)

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  4. Laura - the nice thing about making pesto yourself is that you can adjust the flavour to your taste. You can really taste the garlic in it.

    5 Star Foddie - It's wonderful, if you ever come across some - grab it.

    Goodshoeday - if only it travelled well, I would post you some. We have woodland steam-side covered in it near-by.

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  5. oh my gosh, you are speaking my language with the pesto, and with wild garlic - oh my goodness. Love it, the photos are a work of art! Hope you are enjoying springtime.

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  6. I can almost smell the fragrance from here - how wonderful.

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  7. Oysterculture - I not tried wild garlic pesto until I made it last weekend, it's certinaly a good combination!

    giz - the smell is wonderful, although when I drive to work at 8am I'm not as quite as enamoured with it as the smell wafts into the car!

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  8. Neat - I've never heard of wild garlic leaves. Are they connected to garlic scapes?

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  9. Looks so good, I featured it at www.squidoo.com/pine-nuts

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I'd love to know any comments you might have.