Wild Garlic Pesto

I am a crap singer.  So bad, that I'm only allowed to sing in the car.  When I'm on my own.  Even Miss A has learned to say 'No more singing, Mummy'.  That hurts the most because when she was tiny, I used to get away with singing to her lots.  Especially when I was trying to get her to sleep.  Although now I sit here and think about it, maybe she was just pretending to go to sleep when I murdered various lullabies as a way of getting me to shut up because if she cried, I only sang more thinking it would calm her down.

She wasn't this clean when we'd finished!

Since I was a child, I'd wished that life could be just like in the musicals where people just randomly burst into song in the middle of the day.  Singing and dancing (just as badly as I sing) can lift my mood.  My car is filled with CDs I've made to suit my mood and I'm often seen sat at traffic lights belting out some tune or another.  One day I was stuck in traffic in my convertible (this was years ago when I could drive impractical cars) and started singing and bopping along to some tune or another and a drop-dead-gorgeous guy pulled up in a convertible next to me and started singing and bopping along with me.  Of course, if life really was like a musical, I'd be married to him now.  Sadly not.

In fact, if I was to liken myself to a TV character, I'd be like Ally McBeal or JD from Scrubs.  Things happen and my reaction is to sing a song in my head.  I'm sure at meetings people think I must be mad because someone will say something and I start grinning to myself.  Because I've turned on my inner jukebox and started up a tune appropriate to the situation.

If I was singing a song right now, it would be The Great Pretender.  Because a couple of days ago, I thought I'd arrived as a real foodie as I went off foraging for wild garlic.  That's what real foodies do.  They don't just tap their shopping list into their Ocado Android App.  They have food as nature intended - not wrapped in sterile shrink wrap.

Random greenery - I'm sure there's garlic there somewhere

An old colleague mentioned on Facebook that he'd been making wild garlic pesto and it was great.  There's an abundance of wild garlic round where I live every year and it always smells amazing (provided you like garlic) but I've never been brave enough to pick it before in case I was picking the wrong thing.  A quick bit of advice from B and off I went with Miss A and doggie number 1 to find some wild garlic of my very own.

After a trek through a very muddy wood, we alighted on a bountiful patch and with Miss A's help, I soon had a carrier bag-ful.  I bought it home, picked it over, washed it and left it to drain in the sink.  The husband appears and asks why I've been out picking weeds.  I inform him that it's wild garlic.  He's heard me comment on plenty of dog walks as to what's making the smell and I've even shown him the plants.  He doesn't believe me and informs me that I'm stupid and have probably picked deadly nightshade and will end up killing myself.

In my slightly paranoid state, I'd tweeted B a picture asking him to confirm that I was about to pick the right thing.  He responded saying that he thought so.  On second look at the picture, I noted that it also showed bluebells and what I know as 'Sweethearts' - those sticky plants that you pick and then stick to someone's back and laugh raucously when they don't realise how daft they look with a weed hanging from their jumper (of course I only did this when I was about six - honest!).

I then Googled some images.  These were mildly reassuring until B tweeted while I was making my pesto to say I should crush a stem and it should smell of garlic.  It was only a very faint smell, but by now my paranoia was overriding common sense.

Anyway, to cut another long blog post short, I persisted and whilst heating the pesto with some pasta finally got a decent garlic smell from it.  Reassured, I sat down to eat, only to find that it tasted like pasta tossed in freshly cut grass clippings.  No garlic, no taste from the parmesan or walnuts.  Very disappointing.

Wild garlic pesto and tagliatelle

So obviously I'm not a real foodie, just A Great Pretender.  See what I did there?  Or maybe my palate has just been ruined by years of over-flavoured processed food and I am just blind to the delicate flavour of wild grass clippings.  Sorry, wild garlic.

Don't take my word for it.  I'm just one person in a sea of foodies who have all been jumping up and down raving about this delicacy.  I have a huge jar of the stuff so will try some other things with it over the next week or two.  Maybe it will be better when it's had chance to mature for a few days.  Or maybe I really have picked the wrong thing.  In which case, I'll never find it out if it tastes better when mature and this may well be the last blog post I ever write.  Keep your fingers crossed for me!

So if you want to test your foodie credentials, hop over to the River Cottage website and check out the recipe I used.

Pappardelle with Prawns and Samphire

Years ago, if I'd had to pick a cookery show to watch, anything with Rick Stein would've been way down the list.  I always used to think of him as 'the guy who only ever cooks fish' and whilst that's probably still quite true, having watched clips of his stuff on Saturday Kitchen, he's quite grown on me to the point that I have one of his books in my Amazon shopping basket.  Of course, it's still unpurchased as there's always something else I'd rather buy, but at least I can pretend I'm being adventurous.

The first time he hooked me into something was actually with a fish dish.  But this one had samphire in it. For some reason I became a bit fixated on the idea of samphire - I'm really not sure why and I certainly don't remember what he cooked it with - but it was one of those things that I just had to have.  Of course, living nowhere near the sea any more and what with it being seasonal local produce, the chance of getting some has never arisen in the intervening years.  Until Friday.  When I found myself with a generous handful of samphire and no clue what to do with it.

I have no idea how long it keeps for so I felt bound to try and cook with it within a day or two.  Ewan Mitchell, blogger at Tonight's Menu and creator of the Olympic Food Challenge, suggested a recipe that he recently made with Lemon Sole.  That's another ingredient on my hit list before the end of the year, but living in land-locked Wiltshire fresh fish at short notice is a bit of a challenge at times.  Not having a local fishmongers, I ended up settling on making something up with prawns based on a little bit of Googling about samphire.  And actually, it wasn't all that bad.

Lots of green, healthy looking stuff (swimming in butter!)

For the second day in a row, I feel quite proud that I've eaten something seasonal - even if the produce isn't exactly local with it.  But at least it's not been imported thousands of miles on a freight plane.

Samphire is touted as 'the asparagus of the sea' and it's supposed to have a really salty taste.  I have to admit that I was expecting it to taste like a mouthful of seawater, but actually, it's not that salty.  Or maybe my palate has just become accustomed to too much salt???  From the reading I did, people recommended to not salt the dish.  In this case, I would highly recommend seasoning the pasta a little before finishing as the large, flat ribbons of pasta can be quite bland if picked up sans samphire.  I normally only buy unsalted butter, but for this I'd probably go for slightly salted and then add lashings of pepper to the pasta before serving.

To give flavour, I added some lazy chillies for some heat, garlic for flavour and then sprinkled the top with chopped parsley and served with lemon to squeeze over.  I don't know if this is a sensible seasoning combination, but I liked it.  The samphire has a slightly bitter tang to it so there seemed to be a good range in the dish - bitter, salty, sour, spicy and sweet from the prawns.  If nobody else likes this dish, I know one person who would - my wonderful Grandma who would've been 83 today.  There's nobody else I would've rather had dinner with tonight.

Serves 2

• 250g pappardelle pasta
• 200g king prawns
• 25g slightly salted butter
• handful samphire
• 1 chilli, deseeded and finely chopped or 1tsp lazy chillies
• 1 clove garlic, finely chopped
• small handful parsley, finely chopped
• lemon wedges to serve

1. Cook the pasta according to the package instructions.  Drain and return to the pan, tossing in half of the butter and season with some black pepper.  Keep warm by placing a lid over the saucepan.
2. Wash the samphire and cook in boiling water for three minutes.
3. Whilst the samphire is cooking, melt the butter in a frying pan over a medium heat and cook the garlic and prawns until they just start to turn pink and the garlic softens.  Drain the samphire.
4. Add the chilli, samphire and pasta and to the prawns and warm for a couple of minutes, ensuring everything is well combined.  
5. Serve sprinkled with the chopped parsley and lemon wedges.

Thomasina Miers' Spring Tacos with Mushrooms

Just after hitting 10,000 views

Firstly, I would like to take the opportunity to say thank you to all my readers for helping me make it to 10,000 page views in just over six months.  I am amazed and humbled that people have spent time reading my words.  I never thought in my wildest dreams that anyone other than my mother* and my lovely cousin Laura would read it.  But to reach 10,000 page views in such a short space of time has made me all warm and fuzzy inside.  So a huge thank you to everyone who has read, commented and tweeted me about it.  It's been fun and you've all kept me going.  And given me a reason to see it through to the bitter end in late September.

I would love to name everyone who I know has taken the time to read, but I'm bound to miss someone out.  Don't take offence if I do, but in no particular order thanks to Laura B, Tamara, Chantelle, Pauls L and W, both Kate S's, Dicky, Robs A, B and C, Hubby (for letting me pick on him), Paul L, Phil, Nelly, Sadia, Jaime, @UnderTheBlueGum, Amy (@WeeklyBakeOff), Laura (@Philosophobia), both Jules', Lisa, Allison, Alison (yes one has one 'l' and the other has two), Ewan who is letting me join his Olympic challenge (more about that on another day) and to all the people who have had cake foisted on them when I've had a baking frenzy.

Anyway, on to today's recipe.  Despite living in a 'Market Town' we don't actually have a proper market.  There are a few token stalls strewn down the high street on a Saturday - most selling tat, the with a couple of local producers selling cake and a few veg - but nothing to allow you to stock up.

Driving home midweek and in need of just one chilli I was sulking to myself that I'd be forced to buy an entire packet that I'd either have to use or would end up rotting slowly in the fridge.  That's the trouble with generally cooking for one.  Or cooking for three - but cooking three separate meals.

Fungi

I stopped in Morrisons for some odds and ends and was amazed to see that the latest revamp has turned the fruit and veg section into a proper market place where you can actually buy small quantities of things.  And most stuff is loose.  Meaning if you want one chilli, you can spend 8p (as I did) rather than 65p on pre-packaged ones that will go to waste.  I got overly excited by the fact that you can buy all manner of exotic things which will be great for some recipes on this blog over the remaining months.  

So having fallen out big style with Ocado, I gave up my blessed Friday afternoon off this week in favour of doing my shopping myself and buying exactly what I need with minimal waste on both food and packaging.  See David Cameron, I'm doing my bit.

The most exciting bit is that they sell loose exotic mushrooms so expect many mushroom based recipes in the coming weeks.  I have always loved mushrooms and can't believe so many of my friends don't share my passion.  At one point, I was surrounded by so many mushroom-fearing that like a parched man in the desert, I literally jumped on the husband (he was not even boyfriend back then) like he would be my foodie saviour.  Desperation leads to hasty assumptions.  Hindsight is a wonderful thing.

I'd had a few rubbish relationships around this time so with a good friend, came up with a list of ten criteria that any new beau had to meet.  Liking mushrooms was on the list.  The list became my dating yardstick and the husband was the only one who ticked all ten boxes.  

Cooked mushrooms taste better than they look!

Anyhow, although he's not being subjected to experimental mushroom-ness tonight, tea tomorrow will also contain exotic mushrooms (see no waste here now).  Like my mother, tea for him must contain meat, so I chose a recipe that would allow me to share part of the meal and for him to have chicken.

Thomasina Miers has a section in her book (Mexican Food Made Easy) about tacos and different fillings for each season.  I made the summer ones early on in this challenge.  The spring one is mushroom based so I gave this a whirl to great success.  Instead of using her taco recipe, I made Dan Lepard's corn oil tortillas.  The dough is pretty similar and I really should've just made a few smaller ones to replicate a taco - but I'm greedy so went for two bigger wraps.

As for the taste.  It sounds weird, but it was just like eating a spring woodland, in the nicest possible way!  The mushrooms - being proper mushrooms than bog standard white button mushrooms - had an amazing earthy taste.  I had a mix of Pied Bleu, Shitake and regular chestnut.  And despite having probably sat on a shelf in Morrisons for a day or two, they tasted like they were freshly picked.  I've picked mushrooms in the past with an expert, but wouldn't be brave enough to do so myself.

With a liberal sprinkling of parsley and coriander in place of the tarragon, the flavour was lifted with a kind of fresh, grassy flavour.  And the saltiness of the feta (Miers recommends this if you can't get Pecorino) gave it a depth that seasoning alone couldn't achieve.  

If I could afford to buy piles of these mushrooms (the Pied Bleu were something ridiculous like £30/kg), I'd eat this dish time and again.  As always,  top marks to Thomasina and also to Dan for the tortillas.  These I now make regularly as it's far less stressful than trying to open a packet of shop-bought ones and a darn sight tastier too.

Sadly, the recipe for the tortillas still isn't online but it's just another reason to buy the book.  But they do get rave reviews from lots of the lovely people I Tweet with.

Cooking time: 15–20 minutes

No matter how you look at them, they're not that attractive...

• 25g butter
• 2 tablespoons olive oil
• 750g St George's, Morell or mixed mushrooms, sliced
• Sea salt and black pepper
• 1 tablespoon truffle oil (optional)
• 2 shallots, finely chopped
• 2 cloves of garlic, finely chopped a small handful tarragon, chopped

To serve

• A small handful of parsley, roughly chopped
• Grated Pecorino cheese
• Addictive sweet chipotle paste

1. Heat half the butter and olive oil in a frying pan and add the mushrooms, seasoning with salt and pepper.

2. Cook over a high heat until the mushrooms have released their juices and the juice has started to evaporate, about 10 minutes. Add the rest of the butter and the oil (including the truffle oil if you are using it), the shallots and garlic and cook until soft. Sprinkle with the tarragon and check the seasoning.

3. Spoon the mushrooms into a heated earthenware dish that will look fun on the table and sprinkle over the parsley and cheese. This is incredibly delicious with my sweet chipotle paste, but also yummy with the Fresh tomato salsa on page 26 and a dollop of crème fraîche. 

*My mother doesn't have time to read my blog apparently.  She'd much rather spend her time playing Cityville on Facebook.