Ramson Pesto

Using the Wild Garlic leaves collected, make a very simple, but fantastically tasty, pesto sauce for pasta dishes or to add flavour to stews and soups.

Ingredients:

Generous Handful of Wild Garlic

Olive Oil

Grated Parmesan (or similar hard cheese)

Salt & Pepper

Lemon Juice

1)       Finely chop the Wild Garlic leaves, and add to a pestle or bowl.

2)       Add a teaspoon or 2 of olive oil, add salt, pepper, lemon to taste, and grind together to make paste.

3)       Add a good sprinkling of grated Parmesan and stir in.

This is the basic paste – I have deliberately left the quantities vague as personal preference plays a role, and it’s all about seasoning to taste! The pesto should be added immediately to pasta, stirring thoroughly through spaghetti for example, as it doesn’t keep longer than a few days - the Ramson takes on a bitter taste. Mix with left-over chicken or bacon, for example, or even halved cherry tomatoes, to create a more full pasta sauce, or just experiment as the garlic and parmesan taste goes with just about anything.

The pesto can be frozen very successfully – try using ice cube trays, as a single cube of frozen pesto does for a single serving of pasta, and it will keep for many months – certainly past the Ramson season, and perhaps into the next! 

Ramson (Allium ursinum)

AKA: Wild Garlic

Where: Shaded woodland, especially damp places. Common throughout the UK.

What: Leaves.

When: March – June

Very common, very plentiful, and very very tasty, the Ramson is a wonderful blessing to we happy foragers. Favouring the woodland clearing, and particularly damp areas (stream sides, ponds, etc), the Ramson often occurs in huge swathes; by mid-May it’s presence within a wood will be unmistakable, and by late June, it may be overpowering!

The leaves are fairly characteristic, up to 25cm long, emerging bright green and vibrant in March/April time from a single stem. Smooth and vaguely lined with a slightly coarse upper, and a smooth shiny underneath, they are thin, and taper, spear-like, to a point. These are what we want! Pick them, place them flat in a bag or basket, and use them fast – they don’t keep, and begin wilting almost immediately. The taste, though unmistakable and pungent, is more subtle than it’s more common and somewhat gauche cousin. It can be used as you would a regular bulb of garlic, but it can also be placed in a salad without fear of overpowering the other flavours. Generally, it is better to pick the leaves before they flower, as after the flowers emerge they become, I think, slightly bitter and insipid. The flowers themselves, incidentally also garlicky and edible, arrive in April onwards, and are white, 6-petalled, <1cm across, with a green centre and reddish stamens, and occur in large groups of 15 or more at the top of a single stalk. The root, also tasting of garlic, is available all year round, provided you can find the plant, but is in truth probably more trouble than they are worth.

All parts smell strongly of garlic, so there are no problems with identification, and although several species can be superficially similar to the leaves, it’s just a matter of crushing and sniffing!

I love Ramsons, I really do. Free garlic… c’mon, that’s excellent! 
Check out the recipe for a delicious Ramson Pesto in the next post.

Ramsons on the banks of Colden Brook, Hebden Bridge.

Close-up showing flowers (photo credit: Kurt Stüber via Wikipedia)