ramsons – Louisa Parry

A change from my last very quick and easy wild garlic (Ramsons) meal – I made crab & wild garlic risotto for dinner today.

I got two dressed crabs from Leeds Farmers Market – the guy gave me a free one because he wasn’t doing another market for a few days and they don’t freeze them, so I decided to do something a little different than my usual, which is gobbling them down with some bread & salad. I found a crab and leek risotto recipe online and thought wild garlic would do instead.

I’m not the risotto maker in this house but John was out (and doesn’t like crab anyway) so I just bodged it. I knew I didn’t want to cook either the crab or wild garlic for too long so I made a very plain standard base with the rice (although as a nod to the to-be-added ingredients, I added lemon juice to the stock) and added the crab and the wild garlic (roughly cut again) just before the parmesan at the end.

The risotto was very fresh and light – the crab quite delicate but definitely there; ditto the wild garlic. The leaves were mostly wilted like spinach and I was glad I’d cut them up a bit.

I had my first wild garlic of the season today! The woods behind our house are *full* of it – the banks of the stream on both sides are five foot deep with it, mostly just small baby leaves at the moment but some bigger leaves too.

I picked some – a large handful – while on my lunchtime walk with Lily. Because they’re *everywhere*, it was easy to pick up some from slightly off the beaten track and I nibbled a leaf as I walked back to the house.

In the kitchen, I squished the roughly chopped wild garlic leaves into some leftover mashed potato and added a beaten egg as a binder, then shallow fried them until golden brown-ish. In the other side of the pan, I fried up some smoked bacon and ate them together with a giant grin on my face.

In the past, we’ve done slightly more elaborate things with wild garlic – eg, the ubiquitous pesto – but this was very simple and delicious!

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