Recipes: Wild Garlic and Nettle Sauce | Wild Garlic Oatmeal Crust

This is the time of year for an abundance of free food, just there for the picking – wild garlic, young nettles, which taste similar to spinach, and sorrel, with its pointy leaves and astringent flavour. All three are delicious and providing that you pick them with care – not beside a road or where dogs might have wandered, (and wearing gloves in the case of young nettles, as protection from their sting) they grow in quantity, just there, for us to gather.

I have written before about soup and a sauce including these invaluable ingredients, but a recent visit to see my daughter in Bavaria inspired me further. The Germans make so much more use of these plants during their season than we do and we might take a lesson from them.

As with spinach, nettles wilt down on cooking, so a basketful will only yield enough for 3-4 people on the plate.

And sorrel has a deliciously sharp almost citrus flavour, which makes it so good with rich food, as in the stuffing for roast duck.

Wild Garlic and Nettle Sauce for coating hardboiled eggs

This makes a delicious and less calorific dressing for hardboiled eggs than mayonnaise.

Serves 6 as a first course

6 eggs, each put into cold water, brought to simmering point and simmered for

5 minutes. Drain, and run cold water through the pan. Shell each egg and cut in half lengthways.

For the sauce

8oz/225g young nettles

the tops of 4 wild garlic plants

1 anchovy fillet

2 tablespoons olive oil

juice of ½ lemon

½ teaspoon salt, about 15 grinds of black pepper

Plunge the nettles into a saucepan containing about 4in/10cm salted boiling water and clamp the lid on top. After 2 minutes, lift the lid and add the wild garlic, and count to 30 before draining the contents of the pan through a wide sieve. When cool enough, squeeze out as much liquid as you can, and put the nettles and wild garlic into a food processor. Add the anchovy fillet, salt and black pepper and whiz, adding the olive oil and lemon juice. Taste, and if you think it is needed, add more salt and lemon juice. You will have a thick sauce.

Put two halves of egg on each of 6 plates. Coat each with a small spoonful of the green sauce. Add a small clump of vinaigrette-dressed salad leaves at the side of each coated egg.

Wild Garlic Oatmeal Crust - for baked chicken thighs.

This crust can also be baked on racks of lamb instead of the chicken thighs.

12 skinless chicken thighs

For the crust

3 tablespoons olive oil

1 onion, skinned, halved and diced finely

12oz/340g pinhead oatmeal

1 teaspoon salt, about 20 grinds of black pepper

2 good handfuls of wild garlic, small bulb ends as well as the green chive-like stalks, all washed, patted dry with kitchen paper, then chopped on a large board

Heat the olive oil in a wide based saucepan and fry the diced onion over moderate heat, stirring occasionally. Then add the pinhead oatmeal, salt and black pepper to the pan and, stirring occasionally, cook for about 5 minutes, over moderate heat. Take the pan off the heat, cool, and then mix the chopped wild garlic.

Put the chicken thighs into a roasting tin. Spoon the wild garlic and oatmeal over the thighs in an even layer. Bake in a moderate heat, 350F/180C/Gas Mark 4 for 1-1 ¼ hours.