How to cook with wild garlic

In British cooking we have traditionally had a complicated relationship with garlic. Let the french use it to their hearts’ content: fine in a Toulouse but no thank you in a Cumberland. Suggestive of this wariness is wild garlic’s many names – ‘devil’s garlic’, ‘gypsy’s onions’ and ‘stinking Jenny’ amongst others.

But in recent years British cooks have taken to wild garlic with unabashed relish (and indeed it makes rather a good one, as seen here). Food always tastes better having foraged or hunted for it yourself and so it is with wild garlic. The leaves appear in March and you will find them throughout spring but they are best picked early in the season. The joys of foraging can though sometimes be dampened by shrill warnings of the dangers at every turn amongst the flora. Don’t fret: yes you may mistake the similarly leaved – and poisonous – Lily of the Valley for wild garlic as you roam amongst the deciduous woodland where it is found in most abundance.