Recipe | Wild Garlic & Goat's Cheese Savoury Scones

Easy peasy and very cheesy. Slather with too much butter and dip into your hot soup.

Makes 9

350g strong bread flour

½ tsp salt

3½ tsp baking powder

100g unsalted butter, cut into

small cubes

150g goat’s cheese

50g wild garlic, chopped, saving

9 leaves for decoration

90ml milk

100ml double cream

1 egg (beaten)

To make

1 Preheat the oven to 190C/Fan 170C/Gas 5. Place the flour, salt and baking powder into a large mixing bowl. Add the butter and rub it into the flour mix with your fingers until it has a breadcrumb-like consistency.

2 Break the goat’s cheese into small pieces and stir gently into the mix.

3 Finely chop the wild garlic and place in a bowl along with the milk and cream. Gently blend the wet and dry ingredients together to form a dough.

4 Lightly flour a surface and roll out the dough into a square roughly 3cm thick, cutting it into 9 square-ish scones. Gently press one wild garlic leaf into the top of each scone and brush with the beaten egg.

5 Bake for 15–20 mins, or until golden brown, and cool on a wire rack before serving with lashings of butter.

These very moreish scones are just one of the recipes from our ‘gathering’ feature, Turning A New Leaf from our April issue, with recipes by Kay Prestney and photography by Rebecca Lewis. It’s bursting with wild garlic recipes for spring - just add friends and a foraging bag.

Buy this month's The Simple Things - buy, download or subscribe

More ways with wild garlic…

More from our blog…

Recipe | Wild Garlic Risotto with Griddled Asparagus

Risotto is a wonderful canvas to showcase the first of a new season’s produce and in this instance, the celebratory ingredients are spring’s premium greens: wild garlic and asparagus

SERVES 4 (with enough leftovers for arancini) or 6 (with little to no leftovers)

RISOTTO BASE
Olive oil, plus extra to finish 2 onions or 3 leeks (whites and light green), finely chopped
300g risotto rice
A wine glass of white wine (optional but adds heaps of flavour)
1.5 ltr stock (chicken or veg for a classic risotto), simmering
Half of the wild garlic purée (below), more or less, to taste
1 lemon, zest and a squeeze of juice, to finish

WILD GARLIC PURÉE
300g wild garlic (you can pad it out with baby leaf spinach, if needed)
100g salted butter

GRIDDLED ASPARAGUS
400g asparagus

1 Heat a splash of olive oil in a large pot over a medium heat. Add the onion and gently cook until the onion is glossy and tender.

2 Tip in the rice and let it crackle and pop for a few minutes. Pour in the wine and let the rice guzzle it up.

3 Add a crack of black pepper and cook for a min or 2 before adding the first ladle of stock.

4 Set a timer for 20 mins. Lower heat to a simmer and add the stock to the rice, little by little, until the timer goes.

5 While it cooks, make the wild garlic purée. Bring a pot of water to the boil. Plunge the wild garlic in the water then drain immediately and rinse under really cold water to cool down. Squeeze out excess water, roughly chop and blend with the butter to make a smooth purée – add a little lemon juice and/or more, butter, if needed. Season to taste and set aside.

6 Once the risotto has had 20 mins, take off the heat and griddle your asparagus. Set a large frying pan over a high heat. Snap the woody ends off the asparagus (save them for the Asparagus stalk arrabbiata). Rinse the asparagus then add to the smoking hot pan while it still has a little water clinging to it. Season with a good pinch of salt. Cook for 4-5 mins, turning once or twice, until just tender and slightly charred. Season well.

7 Place the risotto back on the heat just to warm through. Fold in the wild garlic purée. Taste and adjust the seasoning and add a bit more stock, if needed. You want the risotto to have a creamy texture and not be too thick. 8 Scoop the risotto onto warm plates and top with the griddled asparagus, a drizzle of olive oil, grated lemon zest and a squeeze of lemon juice

This risotto was just one of the recipes from our Home Economics pages, which is all about reviving age-old wisdom about household management and deeply valuing all our resources: our time, ingredients and the money we invest in them. As well as the risotto, the feature includes recipes for Rosy Strawberry Crumble, Arancini with Asparagus Stalk Arrabiata, Almond Shortbread with Rose Sugar, Wild Garlic Butter and Strawberry Shrub. They’re all in the May issue, which is in shops now. The recipes are by Rachel de Thample with photography by Ali Allen.

Buy this month's The Simple Things - buy, download or subscribe

More from our blog…

More recipes for wild garlic…

Recipe: Wild garlic bannocks with asparagus pesto

Bannocks are a traditional May Day food, and Beltane cake may have been similar: a scone-like bread cooked on a griddle over the Beltane fire. Wild garlic is carpeting every woodland floor at the moment, and it makes a savoury and aromatic addition.

Wild garlic bannocks

Makes up to 20 bannocks
550g self-raising flour
1 tsp baking powder
1⁄2 tsp salt
1 tbsp caster sugar
50g butter
a good handful of wild garlic leaves, washed and dried
1 egg
150ml buttermilk (or full fat milk with 3 tbsp of yoghurt stirred in)

1 You can cook these over a griddle on a fire or hob, or in the oven. If cooking in the oven, preheat it to 230C/Fan 210C/450F.
2 In a large bowl, mix together the flour, baking powder, salt and sugar, then chop in the butter and rub it in with your fingers until it resembles fine breadcrumbs. Slice the wild garlic leaves and mix them in.
3 Beat the egg into the buttermilk (or milk and yoghurt) and then start mixing it into the dry mix to form a dough. Bring it together and knead it briefly on a floured surface, before rolling it out to about an inch in thickness (a little thinner if cooking on the griddle) and cut out rounds or squares from it.
4 Place on a baking sheet and bake for 8-10 mins, or place onto a hot griddle and cook for around 5 mins on each side. Test one to check that it is cooked through. Serve the bannocks hot, split and buttered.

This is a wonderful way of using up any asparagus ends and offcuts, as they are full of flavour but the processing removes any stringiness and toughness.

Asparagus pesto

450g asparagus spears or offcuts
50g hazelnuts
1 clove of garlic, crushed
60ml extra virgin olive oil (plus a little extra for finishing)
75g finely grated Parmesan cheese
juice of half a lemon
salt and pepper

1 Steam the asparagus over boiling water for 8-10 mins, until it can be easily pierced with a sharp knife. Remove from the heat and leave the asparagus to cool.
2 Dry fry the hazelnuts over a high heat for a few minutes until the skins start to come away and the nuts become slightly toasted. Remove from the heat and tip into a clean tea towel then rub off any loose skins.
3 When nuts and asparagus are cool, tip them into a food processor with the garlic, olive oil and Parmesan cheese. Pulse until everything is broken up and amalgamated but still has some texture. If the pesto is too thick, add a little more olive oil. Season with salt and pepper and
a squeeze of lemon juice, to taste.

This recipe was first publisjed in the May 2016 issue of The Simple Things. so we think it’s definitely time to give it another go.

From our May issue…

More recipes for Spring days…

Recipe: Wild garlic soup

Ramsons, or wild garlic, makes for easy foraging. Around now, damp woodland becomes carpeted in bright green leaves, the air heavy with its savoury aroma. If you can’t find any wild garlic, you can replace it with watercress, young nettles (wear gloves when harvesting – the sting will go when cooked!), spinach, kale or chard. 

Wild garlic soup

25g butter
2 potatoes, diced
1 onion, chopped
1 litre chicken or vegetable stock
2 large handfuls of wild garlic leaves, washed and roughly chopped
110ml regular or double cream
Crusty bread, to serve

1 Melt the butter in a large saucepan over a medium heat. When foaming, add the potatoes and onion, and toss in the butter until well coated, then season with salt and pepper. Turn the heat down, cover the pan and cook for 10 mins or until vegetables are soft, stirring regularly so that the vegetables don’t stick and burn.
2 Next, add stock and bring to a rolling boil, then add the wild garlic leaves and cook for 2 mins or until the leaves have wilted. Don’t overcook or it will lose its fresh green colour and flavour.
3 Immediately pour into a blender and blitz until smooth, then return to the clean pan, stir in the cream and taste for seasoning.
4 Serve hot with crusty bread.

COOK’S NOTE: Harvest garlic leaves between March and May before the plant flowers. Be mindful and pick a little here and there. Wild garlic looks similar to the poisonous lily of the valley so always crush the leaves and check for the smell of garlic before picking.

Recipe from Recipes From My Mother by Rachel Allen (Harper Collins). 

If you’ve got a lust for something green and pungent after that you won’t want to miss the start of our new foraging series, Finders Keepers, by Lia Leendertz (first part in our April issue, in shops now). Foraged crops are free, abundant and flavourful. All you need do is get yourself to a good spot at the right time, basket and secateurs in hand, and you have some of the best crops available. Through the foraging seasons of spring, summer and autumn, we’ll show you where to find these crops, how to pick them, and ways to turn them into delicious dishes. This month’s pages include a fabulous recipe for wild garlic, nettle and broad bean frittata that has already gone in our best recipes notebook.

 Get hold of your copy of this month's The Simple Things - buy, download or subscribe

More from the April issue:

More wild garlic recipes:

Get hold of your copy of this month's The Simple Things - buy, download or subscribe

View the sampler here

Recipe: Wild garlic pesto

If you’ve been to the woods recently and noticed a rather pungent smell, you’ve probably stumbled across wild garlic, otherwise known as Ramsons, which carpet our woodlands at this time of year. 

We asked expert forager Chris Westgate of Heavenly Hedgerows for her advice on how to pick and eat this most delicious wild plant:

• The whole plant is edible but the young leaves have the best flavour and their late arrival this year means they should be just about perfect now. They’re best eaten raw in a salad or used as the base for a pesto (see right). Cooking will help reduce the pungency if you find the flavour too strong.
• Try drying the leaves and adding them to sea salt. They keep for ages and taste wonderful on roast lamb or potatoes.
• Use the star-like, white flowers to prettify a spring salad.
• Once flowering, the seeds are also good to use. They pack quite a punch in salad or on top of a soup. They’re great pickled, too. Just pop in a clean jar and cover with vinegar for use during the winter months (they contain Vitamin C). 
• The plant is most easy to identify by its smell but it can be confused in looks with the poisonous Lily of the Valley, Lords and Ladies and Dog’s Mercury, which also likes to grow alongside wild garlic, so pick it with caution. Always wash the plants carefully at home before eating, making sure the leaves definitely smell of garlic.
• Abundant as it may be in parts, it’s good practice, as with all wild plants and fruit, to only take what you will use, leaving lots for wildlife and other people. And remember that it’s illegal to uproot a wild plant without the landowner’s permission.

Wild garlic pesto 

60g wild garlic
60g rapeseed oil
22g parmesan cheese
Salt
35g pine nuts
15ml rice or white wine vinegar or lemon juice

1. Wash the wild garlic, ensuring there are no other leaves in the mix. 
2. Finely chop and add to a blender with the pine nuts. Blend to a smooth-ish consistency.
3. Add cheese, salt, vinegar and oil. 
4. Stir with knife or spatula. Put in small jars until ready to use. Use within two weeks.

Sniff out wild garlic in a woodland near you, forage away and, if you’ve got a garlic glut, try one of these three recipes as well.

Wild garlic hummus

A vibrant green dip/spread with a wonderfully, earthy garlicky element, its Middle Eastern heritage remains.

Wild garlic and goat’s cheese pie

Based on the Greek dish, spanokopita, this pie is made with a mixture of wild greens.

Wild garlic gnocchi with tomato ragout

You'll need a translation for this lovely recipe from Fraulein Glucklich blog, but we think it's worth it.