Another season in lockdown

 

Wild garlic, about to be prepped

It’s a strange time. There’s hope from vaccinations, but we’re still stuck in lockdown.  After a year of Covid, ‘normal’ life – the old normal – seems like a distant mirage. Can we really go back to that?  The prospect of coming out of lockdown is simultaneously longed-for and terrifying. Is it too soon? What about new variants? This stuck in limbo feeling isn’t helped by the weather, which keeps teasing us with hints of spring, then plunging back into winter storms again.  

Amidst all of this, the arrival of wild garlic at our farmer’s market was a welcome sign that things are actually moving forward, however much it feels like they’re not. The season for wild garlic is short, and once you have it, it doesn’t store well in its raw state. So I ordered a pile of the stuff, and spent the afternoon after it arrived processing it.

The main recipe for the afternoon was a wild garlic and olive focaccia, from Claire Thomson’s Home Cookery Year – and what a relief it is to be cooking from the Spring section of the book. The method for this is bit unusual, to me at least. You make the dough, without salt, and leave it to rest for fifteen minutes. Then you add salt, and knead for five minutes. Then, knead in about a quarter of the wild garlic (you use 50g in total), and leave to rest for an hour somewhere warm.

After this, it’s a matter of turning out the dough into a tin (and I’d just like to add, why is it no matter how many tins/roasting trays I have, I never have one the same size as the recipe specifies?), shaping, and making some dimples with your fingers, before leaving to rest for another fifteen minutes, again somewhere warm.

Ready for the oven

Mix the remaining garlic with olive oil and chopped green olives. Sprinkle this over the dough once it’s finished resting, pushing it into the dimples, and bake for 20—25 minutes (although if you have a slow oven like me, it’ll be more like 35). As soon as you’ve taken it out of the oven, drizzle over another two table spoons of olive oil, and sprinkle with sea salt. Allow to cool for 5 minutes before wolfing down.

This produces a large loaf, which we managed to eat half of for dinner. There was also charcuterie, cheese, sundried tomatoes and salad, but mostly there was this bread, and it was good. The leftovers made good sandwiches for a couple of days afterwards. I’ve made many different focaccia recipes over the years, but I think this might become my go-to recipe, even outside of wild garlic season.

Fresh out of the oven

While the bread was rising, I also made wild garlic puree (the leaves blitzed with oil and lemon juice) to go with a dahl, probably on Sunday, and wild garlic pesto. I’ve developed a tradition of making this every year when I can. I started out following some kind of recipe, but now I mostly just make it up as I go along. For about 100g wild garlic (enough for a couple of jars) I use about 50g of nuts (I have at various points used pine nuts, cashews and hazelnuts. This time it was almonds, which also worked) and 50g cheese (parmesan, pecorino, whatever – this year I used a hard goat’s cheese. Something quite sharp works well.), and about 75ml (ish) of oil. I used olive, but rapeseed would work equally well. Blitz the lot. Season to taste. Store in jars with a covering of oil to keep it fresh. It will last for a few weeks in the fridge.

Last year, we went into lockdown as the wild garlic season wound down. This year, we’re still here, even if there’s a way out somewhere in the distance. It looks like we’re still going to be here for another asparagus season (due to start in a few weeks). Maybe by the time the cherries are ripe things will be better? Let’s hope so.