Wild garlic

This month on When in Frome Unfiltered, Sonia heads out into the Somerset countryside in search of one of spring’s most delicious treasures…wild garlic.

Joined by local author Eleanor Hayes, she learns how to forage safely and sustainably, picking up expert tips along the way. From what to look for (and what to avoid), to the joy of turning a handful of leaves into something truly special, it’s a gentle wander through nature at its finest.

Whether you’re a seasoned forager or just curious to give it a go, this is a chance to get outside and discover what’s growing right on your doorstep.

Transcript

SPEAKER_01 0:01

So I'm out with the lovely Eleanor Hayes and we're off to forage some wild garlic. Can you tell me a little bit about where we're going, Eleanor?

SPEAKER_00 0:11

We are going to down to Spring Gardens, which is on the sort of western flank of Room on the outskirts.

SPEAKER_01 0:18

It's lovely down there.

SPEAKER_00 0:19

And there's a little patch of woodland there which is really full of wild garlic. Is it? So it won't it won't mind if we take a few leaves. No. About a month ago it started peeping through and now it's quite abundant. Okay, and we are mid-March. Yes. Yes. And it will keep going through March and April and into May and then we'll die off. Okay, great. So it's a it's a decent season, but it's it's short in many ways.

SPEAKER_01 0:45

Yeah. But that's I love that about seasonal cooking. You get to really enjoy something for that period of time, and then just as you're getting bored of it, something else comes up. Exactly. Perfect.

SPEAKER_00 0:56

Oh, and so so tell me about your book. Okay, so I've just published a book, Wild Garlic Recipes, which is here.

SPEAKER_01 1:05

I've just got to tell our listeners that um I first met you at our training, mine and Daisy's first training, uh from FM, exactly. So that was uh almost a year ago, yeah. And you were telling us then about your book.

SPEAKER_00 1:22

Well, yes, because you said, what's your show gonna be? And I said, Well, I need to get another project out of the way before I start a radio show. Yes, and that is my book, and it's been quite a long project. I've been doing this book for five years, but I also published the first edition six years ago, so quite quickly, then started on the second edition, and yeah, it's been a five-year project, and I'd said to myself that it had to be 100% fun, it's a completely fun project. So, I'm not doing it for the money or the fame, I'm just doing it because I have this weird obsession with wild garlic, and it's a fine obsession to have like I'm uh right there with you on that. And actually, after that first book was published, I started becoming known for it as well, and I get tagged in a lot of posts on social media about wild garlic, and at one point, actually, I was even on Beauty Radio Somerset being interviewed about wild garlic.

SPEAKER_01 2:19

So, where else, other than Spring Gardens, can you get uh wild garlic?

SPEAKER_00 2:24

There's so many places, I think. Probably the most obvious place is the Welsh Mill Woods, um, just by the Cheesing Grain Car Park, which is really really full, and there's a lot along the path to Rodden Meadow. Yep, and to be honest, a lot of the roads all around here, so just up the road, up there is Cuckoo Lane, and that is got a huge wild garlic patch all the way along the side of the road. Would you pick wild garlic from the side of a busy road or would you rather get it? Well, it's not a busy road, it's a sort of more of a country lane, and I would pick it by the side of the road, and the only rule of thumb I would say is it's probably wise if you see it by a path not to pick it anywhere where a dog could have peed on it. Yes. So kind of that ground level right next to the path, I would you know advise caution because that's going to add another flavour profile that you don't want in your that's one way of putting it. Another flavour profile, I love that. In fact, we were we were foraging there just yesterday for wild garlic, and it is all along there as well. Uh so it really is in a lot of places. Great, okay.

SPEAKER_01 3:35

So that's that's good to know. So tell me a little more about we we got interrupted on your book journey, it's taken me five years. So, what was the process like in terms of not just doing the research but then the actual process of writing it, getting it published.

SPEAKER_00 3:54

So I I basically had a notebook, and in the front page I wrote wild garlic recipes and kind of got various bits of inspiration from ideas that I'd had about meals that I wanted to adapt, or maybe I saw something on Instagram and thought that looks great. And so I would make make the recipe and kind of document it as I was making it, uh, maybe make some adjustments if it didn't go right the first time, and also take photographs of it and compiled this all into a very retro handwriting notebook, very um very analogue, which is unlike me, um, until I had enough recipes. And my first edition of my cookbook had about 30 recipes in it, it was quite basic. A lot of the recipes are quite basic, and somebody wrote an Amazon review that said it was a bit basic, and I kind of like proverbially rolled up my sleeves and said, challenge accepted. Okay, so this book has got 110 recipes in. Amazing.

SPEAKER_01 4:53

So uh it feels like this is a and does each recipe have a like a little story behind it where you've got the recipe from, where you came by it?

SPEAKER_00 5:01

Sometimes not necessarily. Uh some of them I get a Riverford veggie box, organic veggie box, and I'm in a Facebook group uh full of very wonderful Riverford people who get their boxes, and we're all total foodies, and there's crazes every year, especially for wild garlic. And um, so one year there was a complete craze for the recipe that we're gonna make today, actually, which is wild garlic and cheese scones. Uh they were all using a there's a Riverford recipe. There's also a National Trust recipe that was very popular, and I kind of have a really nice scon recipes from a different cookbook, and I kind of amalgamated them all and um just made my own version basically. So, and some of them you know I just completely made up, some of them I've adapted from other recipes. Um we'll just go over here.

SPEAKER_01 5:55

Oh, look at the wild garlic, I can see it sprouting. Oh, this is beautiful. This is really stunning. Oh, you're right, this is literally wild garlic heaven. Oh, it's just stunning.

SPEAKER_00 6:15

When the flowers come out later in the season, they really smell, and um that you just you can really smell the garlic flavour. But ironically, by that point the leaves are getting a bit tougher and they're not as intensely spicy as they are at the start of the season. Okay, so that's a really good time to pick it.

SPEAKER_01 6:35

But I've I have made a recipe with wild garlic flowers. Yep. Wild garlic flower fritters. Yeah. In fact, I think you sent me that recipe.

unknown 6:43

I think I didn't.

SPEAKER_00 6:46

Yeah, yeah, and you can um also use the pods as well once it's gone to seed. Okay. Oh, I didn't know that. Yeah, you can pickle them and they're a bit like capers. Okay. So they have that, but with a kind of garlic, crunchy pickles, tang.

SPEAKER_01 7:03

I've done that with nasturtium pods, actually.

SPEAKER_00 7:05

Exactly, yeah, similar, similar.

SPEAKER_01 7:07

But those have got more sort of fire to them.

SPEAKER_00 7:09

Yeah, well the gar wild garlic pods are very similar to nasturtiums in that way and they've got that fire in the seed as well.

SPEAKER_01 7:15

This is just amazing. I I'm just I'm totally blown away at how much wild garlic we're surrounded by.

SPEAKER_00 7:23

And it's quite small still at the moment. You can see a lot of these leaves are really tiny.

SPEAKER_01 7:26

I can see there are leaves at different stages of growth. Yeah. So out of these, which would you go for in terms of the s the really small to the larger?

SPEAKER_00 7:36

Well, I would always go for bigger clumps. Okay. So you can see here there's many that are very small, they're maybe only a couple of inches. And then there's some clumps like these ones, which are, you know, the the length of my hand or more. Yes. And I want to pick the mature ones to because then when I come back in two weeks, all those little ones are going to be the size of my hand. Great. So I'll always try and go for the ones that are better more fully grown.

SPEAKER_01 8:04

Well, that makes it more sustainable as well, doesn't it?

SPEAKER_00 8:06

Exactly, yeah. And what I tend to do is, I mean, in a space like here, obviously there's a huge amount, but I think it's quite important to be responsible about the amount that you're foraging. And so I tend to pick certain leaves, maybe two or three from one plant, and then I'll move on to another plant, taking care not to pick the leaves which have got bird poo on them. Um, and it just and I only pick as much as I need to make one or possibly two recipes, and then then I leave it. Okay, well, let's get picking then.

SPEAKER_01 8:36

Right, we are cooking wild garlic and cheese scones from Eleanor Hayes' Wild Garlic Recipes book. And it's a very simple recipe. We'll cook in uh prep time 20 and cooking time 15. So we are sieving 250 grams of self-raising flour. I'm going to mix in a half a teaspoon of salt, then I'm putting in 55 grams of butter. I'm gonna mix that in with my clean hands. Because I'll wash my hands first.

SPEAKER_00 9:04

This do you know, it this is a good recipe to do with the kids actually, because they love getting their hands right in there and making the bread crumbs.

unknown 9:15

Okay.

SPEAKER_00 9:16

Is this your favourite recipe from the book? Do you have a favourite recipe from the book? Do you know? It's it's up there, it's definitely up there in my top five. I think my absolute favourite, I mean, always you need to have a jar of pesto in the fridge.

unknown 9:31

Okay.

SPEAKER_00 9:33

But I think my absolute favourite is wild garlic facaccia, which is something that I came across a couple of years ago and made it. And it's long-winded because you have to make dough and let it rise into a second fruit and all of that. Yeah. Um, but it is so so yummy, and um, so I think that's probably my favourite, and there's three variations of facaccia in the book, and then I've got to add in the cheese. And we've got some nice mature, extra mature cheddar in here.

SPEAKER_01 10:05

So that was uh 50 grams of mature cheddar. Although the recipe does say anything any cheese will work. Yeah, yeah. So I now have 60 grams of wild garlic that we've just picked today to wash and fresh.

SPEAKER_00 10:26

So yeah, it needs to be shredded or chopped finely because um I'm just gonna stop there. So actually, a good tip is if you bunch it all up together and then fold it over in half, okay, it's a bit easier to manage. But you need to chop it quite finely because the leaves, the shredded leaves are gonna go in the mixture, and we're looking to get dough. And if there's if they're too big, it stops the dough from binding together. Yeah so they just end up being a bit crumbly. So we want to have it reasonably fine, and you can you can use pesto as well, but you would probably need to add a bit more flour or a bit less milk because the pesto is quite wet, so it'll make the dough wetter. Okay. Um, but I think it's nicer with fresh leaves. Me too. I mean the smell coming off this is just. Yeah, and we just we just picked this, you know, two hours ago, so it's couldn't be any fresh really. Guessing, walking, drinking tea, technical problems, day in the life of a podcaster, Sonia.

SPEAKER_01 11:43

Going to milk.

SPEAKER_00 11:45

So we need to have it just the right consistency that it all sticks together nicely, but also we're gonna have to roll it out now. Yeah. So it also, you don't want it too dry that it crumbles, but you don't want it too sticky that it's gonna stick together.

SPEAKER_01 12:00

Um, good, and then a little bit of so we're using a six centimetre cookie cutter.

SPEAKER_00 12:18

I think that's a really nice size for you having a bigger, I think you might want to adjust the cooking colour if you like the little one. Okay, but I quite like the little ones that are. You can also, there's another method where you can kind of just put it in one big hole and you sort of score it into the sections. Uh I prefer individual ones. I don't know why this is satisfying about flight and a half. What are we gonna have on this half?

SPEAKER_01 12:51

What do you need on your phones?

SPEAKER_00 12:52

Well my cheese ones. I think just need lashes of butter. Okay. You could make there's there's probably a vegan version you could do with like marginal uh vegetarian cheese or you know, vegan cheese. Um but I honestly think that really the flashings of butter is really gonna be the nice interesting thing. And we what about a thickness of about two to three centimetres? Because you want to have it big enough to rise. So I suggest that we use the rest of the milk. It's pretty cosmetic, but it gives them a nice kind of little shiny um.

SPEAKER_01 13:47

Perfect. Get them in the oven.

SPEAKER_00 13:49

Yeah, let's get them in the oven.

SPEAKER_01 13:51

Amazing.

SPEAKER_00 13:58

I think the cooking time's about 12 to 15 minutes. Okay. So we'll check them at 10 minutes because every oven is going to be different. I know. So it's good to be checking them a bit early. Job done. You do you feel challenged? I don't think.

SPEAKER_01 14:18

Every moment of the day I feel challenged. Okay, so tell me your your process of you went from your really lovely handwritten notebook. My notebook, yeah, we've got spiral bound, scribbling out um loads of seamer.

SPEAKER_00 14:36

I said, oh no, that's not the right quantities.

SPEAKER_01 14:38

Yeah, great. Um you've gone from that to this beautifully produced book with incredible photographs, all of which you've taken.

SPEAKER_00 14:46

Yeah, so as I was making the recipes, I would photograph them when I'd cooked them and made a note in the book of what date I did that so I could open them again. Um, and then I compiled it all into a document, so I had to write it all up. I at one point I tried to get you know text recognition, but my handwriting's so bad it was completely garbled, so I had to like type the whole lot. Um and I did have somebody uh copy edit it at that point because I wanted somebody to else to look at it, so I I paid a copy editor. Um but then I created the um files and the styling and everything to go to make the Kindle edition, and then I imported the file and uh for the print version. To do the print one, you have to do it in a desktop publishing programme and actually design every single page. So I then matched up all the pictures with the recipes and everything, and I also had to, in this process, decide what order to put the recipes in and what kind of groups to put them in because over a hundred recipes you need to be able to split them. So there's condiments, there's breakfasts, there's uh pastries and baking, which is this um this chapter has got this recipe in pasta and noodles, soups and stews, okay, um, main meals, side dishes, and I think something else I can't remember. So I managed to kind of split them all so they kind of make sense. Um so then I created that, then I did the index. So I created the index myself, which is harder than it looks. Um yeah, so I typeset the whole thing. I did also have a friend as well look at proofread it all at that point as well. Uh, because I'd seen it so often by that point that you stopped seeing little mistakes.

SPEAKER_01 16:39

It's two of you, you've got to have a second pair of eyes.

SPEAKER_00 16:41

Right, it's 280 for pages, right? So um, and then I exported all the files and uploaded it to two different platforms, so it's on Amazon, so you can buy it from Amazon and a Kindle edition, but it's also on another platform, which means that you can order it from any UK bookshop. Amazing. So you could go to Waterstones in Pars and say, I want a copy of this book, and they can order it for you. Fantastic! That's pretty cool. So, for people in Froom, where can they buy this from? So they can buy a copy from me directly, and I will deliver in the Froom postcode. So that's they can go to my website which is wildgarlicrecipes.com, okay, and they can buy it there. And it's on sale, it's um£10 off there, it's£24.99. Amazing. Or they could go to Hunting Raven and get them to um order it for them. We like Hunting Raven. Yeah, if they buy it from me, then I'll sign it for them as well. But some people don't want to sign copies. Well, well done! And also uh uh Pavla from Hedgegrow also sells copies, she makes wild garlic pesto and sells it at the independent market, and she's been selling copies of my old edition. But it is the only fully wild garlic cookbook in the world.

SPEAKER_01 17:56

Amazing! Well, so super niche. I'm I'm super pleased for you. It's a it's such a good story, and and being able to create something here locally with you, who I met in person, and you've written this book and made the scones, and it's just yeah, what I've had a really fun day, thank you. Great, thank you.