Wild Garlic not meant for Bears

In early spring the wild garlic comes up and people go nuts for it, here. In Germany it’s called Bärlauch (Allium ursinum) and is also known as bear garlic, ramsons and wood garlic. A woman at the market told me she eats as much of it she can, fresh, and must no longer take heart medicine. It grows in shade here and is already coming up, mid March. It has a slight garlic flavor, and many people who can’t handle bulb garlic can handle wild garlic. I have heard that folks make pestos out of it, blending it with olive oil, salt and pepper. Cut just the leaves off, but leave the bulbs intact so it will continue to leaf out.

I made a lovely soup yesterday out of it: Carrot and wild garlic soup with buttermilk. I really must get up and running with pictures of what I make, but until new batteries find their way into my camera...

Here’s what I did:

Saute 2 onions in 3-4 T chili oil and vegetable oil, with chili oil taking no more than 2T of that mixture. Add 1 t powdered coriander, ½ T salt, and ½ T black onion seeds (these are optional, but they add another layer to the hotness), still stirring and sauteing.

Add a whole bag of carrots (2 lbs), chopped into cubes, let them sweat a while, and before the pot gets dry, add 1/3 bottle of dry white wine. Fill the rest of the (ca. 4.5 Liter capacity) stockpot with water and add 1-2 T good quality vegetable stock concentrate.

Peel and chop 3 potatoes, and sprinkle with 1/3 cup gram flour (ground chickpea flour) over the top and work in to the damp potatoes with your hands. Put into the soup. If you don’t have gram flour, use wheat flour—but gram flour dissolves like magic, leaving no trace except a smooth gravy, and of course there’s no gluten or clumps.

Then take about 3 to 4 cups of fresh, washed wild garlic and chop, and put into the soup.

Let rise to simmering, and after 20 minutes, taste and season (salt if needed). Then pour in about ½ liter of very fine buttermilk. Be careful, I’ve only done this with European buttermilk which is mixed fine, and doesn’t have any chunks in it, and has a mild flavor. I would have to try this with American buttermilk—I would use perhaps half as much and be prepared to see clumps. Simmer another 30 minutes or so and serve. The chili oil gives it an undercurrent of bite to go along with the mildly tangy/hot wild garlic, but the sweet carrots mellow that out.

Wild garlic doesn’t leave the heavy trace in your breath the way bulb garlic does, but even so, the best thing to take away garlic breath is: milk and chocolate. Really!

Cilantro is Delicious. Period.

Apparently, not everyone loves the cilantro like me. Gourmet Sleuth says, “An interesting note is that people of European descent frequently are reviled by the smell of cilantro.” Reviled!!! And, there is actually a UK joke website built of members who “hate” it. All I can say is, if you find cilantro revolting, you haven’t eaten it right.

I made something delicious by over-using cilantro, and I will share this with you. It was a delicious dish, which can be made in the vegetarian way. (I am not describing an enchanted recipe, here, just a good one to eat.) Here’s what you need.

3 to 4 single frozen lime leaves, cut into chiffonade and minced (interesting note: “A kaffir lime leaf looks as if two glossy, dark green leaves were joined together end to end, forming a figure-eight pattern.” From the Cook’s Thesaurus.)

2-3 Tablespoons Lime flavored oil or sesame oil and regular vegetable oil
2 very small very hot piri piri style dried red chilis, minced (do not use more)
3 chicken breasts, salted with rough sea salt
½ cup or so of flour
2 carrots, diced small
2 tomatoes, diced medium
2 handfuls fresh cilantro or koriander, chopped, including stems (one bunch goes into sauce, one bunch goes into noodles)
¾ cup cream or coconut milk
400g rough egg noodles (not the wide kind, rather the lumpy stroganoff kind)
½ T dried dill
1 Tablespoon butter

Saute about 3 or 4 large lime leaves (minced) and 2 very small very hot red chilis (minced) in a small amount of oil (I used lime oil and raps oil together, couple Tablespoons) and then add 3 chicken breasts which have been salted and dredged with flour. Add two carrots, sliced lengthwise and chopped finely into cubes. Add two chopped tomatoes—blanching isn’t necessary. The tomatoes should provide some more liquid in the pan, but watch it: as the pan becomes dry, add small amounts of (1/4 to ½ cup) water. Add a good handful of fresh cilantro, chopped well. Add more water, and cover the pan to steam the meat. Next, gently and slowly add ¾ cup of cream and use it to loosen the fond of the bottom of the pan, swishing all into the sauce. Simmer up and then move everything to a baking pan and into the oven for about 15 minutes. This gives time for the chicken to be cooked through. This goes into the oven just about the time the noodles are ready to go into boiling water.

Boiling the water for rough egg noodles, and add a Tablespoon of dried dill and another large handful of chopped fresh cilantro to the salted water. Boil until they are done al dente, drain them, adding about a T of butter and keeping them covered. Serve a chicken breast with some sauce over the noodles.

If I were giving up the meat in this recipe, I would instead add one or two yellow or red or orange bell peppers, and a teaspoon or so of herb-based concentrated flavor base. (These are often criticised, but they not wrong to use if they are of high enough quality, and used in such sparing amounts that they cannot really be detected—yet with vegetarian food they give it a much enhanced flavor.) Oh...also, dredge the peppers lightly in flour before they are added. This is to build a fond and thicken the sauce as it develops. Of course, the cream can be substituted by coconut milk, and the noodles can be substituted by rice, for a more traditional combination.

This is very rich and aromatic, with a slight bite. Because its full of cream, you don’t need to eat a lot of it, but you might just want to.