I realised recently that I may have given the impression foraging is all green and, well, soupy. So, to remedy that, here's a celebratory May Day post of a sugary, purple nature! May Day, or Beltane, is usually celebrated on the 1st of the month, though this year lunar Beltane was actually just over a week ago on the April full moon. It's a joyous festival of fertility and new life, and I often like to mark it by gathering little wildflowers for a nature shrine to give thanks for the new growth, the coming summer, and set intentions for all that will be fruitful in the next seasons. It's traditionally the festival of maypole dancing and leaping over bonfires but I'm contenting myself with something a little more sober this year and since the may blossom (hawthorn) is coming out ever so tentatively in this cold spring, that seems entirely appropriate! Thankfully, the local wild violets are in business despite the chilled start to the year and we enjoyed gathering them on our morning walk. ​

You might have encountered palma violets; little sugary tablet like sweets, pale purple, in a roll. They always remind me of my gran! If you've ever had them, you'll remember the subtle, floral flavour. I'm not going to pretend homemade candied violets will taste quite like that and the scent of the wild flowers can be a bit hit and miss. If you've got cultivated sweet violets in your garden, you're more likely to get scent and flavour but for me the main charm of these delicate dainties is their beauty. What a delightful way to celebrate the spring! I try and avoid refined sugar as a rule and most of my biscuit and cake making is the 'healthy' kind that relies on things like date syrup and coconut sugar. I did actually use golden granulated for these little lovelies, however; I'm pretty confident they'd work well with an alternative sweetener, as long as it was a crystallised kind. I also used plant based aquafaba (water from chickpeas or beans) instead of the traditional egg white. If you've not discovered the wonders of this miraculous liquid, I'd highly recommend an adventure in vegan mousse making... But please don't spend silly money on the marketed cartons of the stuff, just spend 60p on a tin of chickpeas and have yourself some garlic mustard houmous at the same time!​

Pick your violets, not forgetting to appreciate how sublimely beautiful they are as you do so! Give thanks to the plant, silently or aloud, however you'd like. I'm sure it makes them taste better if you give the plant a little appreciation as you take the flowers! Do be sure you're actually picking violets. I've noticed quite a bit of ground ivy and speedwell about at the moment, both of which have small, purple or blue flowers so take your spotters guide if you're at all unsure what violets look like!

Lightly wash the flowers and prepare your work space as they dry a little (they don't have to be completely dry, that bit comes later!). You'll need some fine sugar crystals (icing sugar is too fine, I used golden granulated sugar that I ground a bit in a pestle and motar. If you've already got caster sugar, that's would probably do it!

Drain the juice from a can of chickpeas (don't worry, your candied violets won't have a chickpea flavour!) into a small bowl and lightly whisk it with a fork until it's a bit fluffy, it doesn't take long. Remove the violets from their stems and holding the flower at the base, dab the fluffy aquafaba onto the front and back of the petals using a small paint brush. (note to self: invest in a brush for culinary purposes!) now, using a small spoon, sprinkle a little of the sugar on to the wet petals and place the flower onto a sheet of baking parchment. Don't be tempted to speed things up by dunking the flower into either the aquafaba or the sugar; you'll smother the flower in too much of the substance and it'll turn into a sticky mess! Repeat the paint and sprinkle process for each flower then set them aside in a warm dry place for 24 hours to crystallise. You could move this step on a little faster if you have a dehydrator, or by putting them in an oven that's been heated to no more than 100°c and then turned off!

When they're completely dried, you can gently peel them off the paper and store them in an air tight box. They should keep quite well but they're so tasty, I'd recommend enjoying them as soon as possible, as an offering to the (slightly late) spirits of spring and the (hopefully not too delayed) goddess of summer! ​

​If you've been following my recent foraging posts and recip(ish)es, you may have noticed a lack of onion and garlic in my kitchen. I've never been able to tolerate raw onion or garlic but as I've got older I find alium generally difficult to digest. Leeks, in small quantities is OK and on the rare occasions I'm eating away from home I can tolerate a little, well cooked onion and garlic but on a day to day basis I just don't cook with it. It's unfortunate for me that onion and garlic seem to have made their way as standard into almost every veggie or vegan dish and tragic indeed that one of my all time favourite foodstuffs, that trusty vegan staple that is houmous, is so often 'polluted' with the travesty that is actual raw garlic. Shock horror! I've found that it's perfectly possible to make an entirely satisfying houmous (my houmous has been variously described as 'delicious', 'banging' and 'a triumph') by simply eliminating the garlic... But never let it be said that I'm not up for an experiment... And there's a new kid in the hedgerows!

I'd like to introduce the biennial, native, garlic mustard! An attractive, delicately flowered, broad leaved relative of cabbage,  mustard and watercress amongst others, you can use every part of this pretty plant in the kitchen. While the root can be said to have a horseradishy or wasabi like flavour, the leaves and flowers are great in salads and in cooking as an alternative to garlic. 

Therapeutically, garlic mustard has been used as an antiseptic, for bruises and sores, coughs, colds and according to one text even kidney stones, though thankfully I've never had to try that one! It's the latest foragable to have burst up around Llanrhaeadr anyway so I thought I'd give it a go in some garlic free houmous! Happily, it was a great success and it'll definitely become a regular ingredient in houmous for me during its growing season, which should theoretically get me right through into September!

Here's an approximate guide for how to make delicious, banging, triumphant garlic mustard houmous. It's tasty, nutritious and super quick to make. I know every recipe says that and no, I never make a '30 minute' recipe in half an hour either, but it is simple. Really. Check out the gallery photos for visuals on quantity... And see if you can spot the kitty!

Pop a roughly drained tin of chickpeas into your blender jug or a vessel you can use a stick blender in. For 'rustic' houmous and if you've not got a blender, you could in theory use a potato masher, but, no. Get yourself a stick blender, they're great.

Add a couple of generous tablespoons of tahini, about a quarter teaspoon each of ground cumin and smoked paprika, then add freshly ground black pepper and sea or mineral salt to taste.

Glug a good dose of extra virgin olive oil to cover the lot and prepare your garlic mustard; simply snip the leaves and flowers off a ten to twelve stem bunch of the herb, keeping the flowers separate for decorative purposes! Wash and drain the leaves and add them to the vessel along with the juice of a lime (lemon is more traditional, I like lime) and blend the lot until it's smooth. Avoid adding more water if you can, you don't want it too runny!

Et voilà, garlic mustard houmous! Rich, creamy houmous with a garlicy tang, a gentle mustard after-glow and absolutely no alium related indigestion! There shall be much rejoicing! Serve with salad, crackers, fresh bread, crudités, grissini... Or my favourite, a great, big, steaming, hot baked potato! It will keep for a couple of days in the refrigerator, but you'll probably eat it all long before that's an issue.

Bon appetit! You'll be making it again, I promise! ​

* Sorrel can also have the same effect on your tummy as cabbage... you have been warned! ;-) xx

There are few things more wholesome than cooking a genuinely delicious meal from vegetables you've grown, from seed perhaps, in your own garden. But I have to say that cooking a delicious meal from food you've weeded out of your garden to make way for said veggies is possibly even better. My 'to do' list yesterday morning included 'weed herb bed' and 'make packed lunch'... That I managed to do both of those things  in (sort of) one go was incredibly satisfying!

Ground Elder is an absolute scourge here, despite Nik's attempts to smother it into submission with acres of cardboard. It would be a losing battle before I even started to think I could make a dent in it across the whole garden but at the moment I've got a particular interest in keeping the herb bed free of the things that would threaten the optimum development of my poor little newly rooted cuttings. They're already at such a disadvantage thanks to the unseasonably dull, wet weather we seem to have been receiving across the country of late, so it's a good place to start!

​Give the leaves a good wash, pick out any bits of grass (or just decide it probably won't do you any harm) and set aside to drain. If you're organised (I wasn't) you'll have soaked some almonds overnight but you can speed things up by using boiling water to blanch them. They pop out of their skins in a surprisingly pleasing way, once they've cooled down a little. Chuck a really good glug of olive oil in the container you're using to blend, then add two or three large handfuls of ground elder along with your nuts (I used the aforementioned blanched almonds as well as some hemp seeds), some salt and a bit of pepper. Blend away!

With my quantities and blender, I found it needed just a tiny more liquid but I didn't want to add more oil so I used the juice of half a lime, which I thought also added some serendipitous flavour! Finally, I chucked in a little nutritional yeast as a nod to the traditional parmesan; and that was that!

​Use as you would any pesto, in pasta or maybe with bruschetta. I stirred mine into some wholemeal penne (with some chickpeas for extra protein, which made an excellent pasta salad for my packed lunch yesterday and left enough for us to have today as well, though I added some green peas to that for a flavoursome boost and stirred in a little unsweetened soya milk to stop it sticking.

Some of my favourite things to bring to my culinary frolics at this time of year are teas and infusions from freshly growing shoots. There’s just something that feels deeply nourishing to me about stepping just yards from the kitchen door and doing a bit of weeding (well, that’s how I pretend I’m helping Nik in the garden) before brewing up a delicate tonic, full of the promise of spring and a cocktail of nutrients that nature deems appropriate to make available just now.
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​The term ‘weed’ in my book, simply means ‘plants growing in inconvenient places’ but I did actually go a little further afield (maybe ten minutes up the lane) today to find a crop of dandelions which inconveniently weren’t growing in the garden!  I think that counts as a proper forage! I also grabbed a handful of cleavers to add to the pot! (cleavers is also called ‘sticky weed’ and sometimes ‘sticky willy’ but I avoid the latter term myself, ahem.) Dandelions are famous for having a diuretic effect and cleavers are also traditionally utilised to benefit the urinary tract and renal system so this blend is a real flush-you-out spring cleaning detox of a tea. Here’s how I make it:

You want to pick your flowers and greens as soon before making the tea as you can. Once they wilt, they lose a lot of life and flavour, as well as actually starting to look like weeds, or worse, a compost heap! Give them a gentle wash and carefully relocate the mini-beasts that emerge as soggy refugees from your crop. Remove the flower heads from the stems. The leaves can be lovely in salad (note to self for a future post!) but I’ve never found a pleasant use for the thick hollow stems that seep sticky, white and very bitter sap. You really just want the flowers! Get some water boiling (I’ve been using a lovely old copper pot which I’d like to think adds a bit of extra micro nutrient to the brew!) and then reduce it to a simmer. Add the flowers and cleavers, but you really don’t want to boil them. For this tea, I added the juice of half a lime, but note, if you are also using a copper pot, best to add that the tea pot and then pour the tea onto the lime juice. Acidic things in copper pots are liable to result in a little bit too much extra copper in your diet! You could also sweeten it. When I was living in the Taraloka community, we often had organic apple juice concentrate in the ‘fridge and a little of that worked very well with the light flavours but I’d also consider using agave syrup (date would be too heavy) and if you’re not strictly vegan, there’s always the classic spoon of (preferably local) honey!

So, I should like to correct my earlier statement, I’m not going to be sharing seasonal recipes in the formal, traditional sense. I shall be sharing visual guides to the (mostly) seasonal, vegan food I’m preparing for us to eat. Think of them as starting points and, should you feel you need it, feel free to then search out a more formal guide to quantities and cooking times! I do believe cooking should be an intuitive art, a creative act, a magical incantation, an alchemical method for transforming matter via the hopefully joyful activity of eating and I do hope you’ll find some inspiration and permission to begin flinging things about your own kitchen! These recipes will be plant based and will avoid processed food; that’s not to say I don’t occasionally indulge in a bit of vegan ‘cheese’ or a random veggie sausage but I do think preparing meals with minimally processed ingredients is by far the most healthful for person and planet. Fortunately, I also live with an experienced organic grower, which means that a lot of what I use will be home grown or foraged. Of course, if you want to try cooking something I’ve shared, you may need to make some adjustments!

Carefully wash a basketful of nettles (yes, we’re in an organic garden and there’s not much local traffic but there’s probably some agricultural runoff from the local fields and I know the dog’s not the only one to take a leak in random places). Please don’t ask me how big the basket was. Here’s a picture. Sting yourself a bit as you cut the leaves off the stems and then remember the gloves. Look in the ‘fridge and fish out some veg that looks like it would be happier in a stock than where it’s currently languishing. Roughly that sort thing, vague amounts will do, potatoes are a really good addition. I’ve recently discovered that potatoes are a much nicer addition to soup if you peel and boil them separately first. Apparently this helps stop them overpowering the other flavours and improves the texture. I’ve only tried it this once but I’m convinced. Having said that, if you’re short on time you could happily chuck them in with all the other veg, I doubt anyone would really notice. Chop the other veg and sauté it in some tasty fat (I used sunflower oil because it’s cheaper but I’d have liked to use rapeseed or olive) to get all the flavours going. Fat carries flavour, so for sure you can cook things in water if you need to have a very low fat diet for some reason... but I’m sorry to say it almost certainly won’t be as fully flavoured as it’s fatty cousin. 

This is a good time also to add black pepper, salt if you want it, herbs, culinary seeds, that sort of thing. All their flavours get in on the party too. Add some vegetable stock and let it do its thing for a bit whilst you blanch the nettles. That’s a posh word for ‘pour boiling water on them’. Depending on what you’re cooking, you might want to do that in a sieve but I kept them in their water this time so as to not lose any of their flavour or goodness down the sink! Hooray! No need to remember the gloves any longer, your nettles are now not stingy! Add them to the mix, complete with their lovely dark greeny-blue water and then have a mild panic about the lack of protein. Resort to the freezer and chuck in a handful (maybe a cupful?) of frozen peas with a sigh of relief. Cook it a little until they are defrosted and move on to the fun bit; time to release the stick blender! Up to you how smooth you like it. I tend to take this one pretty smooth but no reason not to keep it a bit chunky for character. It’ll hang out there for a little while but avoid letting it boil if you can. Flavours (and probably nutrients) tend to do better below 100 degrees in my experience. ​