wild garlic pesto

In 2016 I had to be rushed to hospital with incredible stomach cramps. See, I’m tattoed all over and don’t have a massive problem with pain, my pain tolerance is very high and this whole situation was quite frightening for me – and even more for my boyfriend at the time, who had never seen me like this. Within a day or so I got diagnosed with gallstones – coming from a significant weight loss at the time – and my gallbladder had to be removed. The gall bladder sits under the liver and stores the liquid, that is produced by the liver. It’s a helpful little organ, but you can easily live without it, iiiiif you follow a little bit of dietary advice. Imagine my face, when the doctors told me, that I need to be careful with fat, deep fried food, alcohol, spicy food (I know, come on, I’m a nutritionist, man) and garlic. Excuse me, what?!

See, I love garlic. No, you don’t understand the significance. I LOVE garlic. I can easily roast a clove of garlic and pop it into my mouth like glorious, garlicky candy. The members of our household were dreaded by dentists, because we regularly forgot to reduce the garlic consumption for one evening before an appointment.

Anyway. I reduced my red wine consumption to a glass every blue moon, when I order take-away I’m a bit more considerate of what and how much I order, I don’t eat raw onions and completely ignored the advice about garlic. Don’t be like me, people. Always follow nutritional advice, they only want you to be healthy. To be fair, a normal amount of garlic doesn’t do me any harm, it starts with larger amounts of garlic – or wild garlic.

Wild garlic grows in the beginning of spring and you can find it in woodland all over the UK – and Germany. It’s easy to spot, because you can smell it before you can see it and it looks like huge fields of green. Wild garlic is best to pick when it hasn’t blossomed yet, but I also like to pick the little white flowers and add them to salads or use as garnish.

Last year we didn’t pick enough, so naturally this year we went fully overboard to get us over the year into next spring. We made pesto, paste, dehydrated wild garlic to mix with salt and blanched it to add to dishes when we feel like it.

Here comes an easy recipe for wild garlic pesto. In the fridge a fresh pesto, covered with a bit of oil will last about 2-3 weeks, but believe me, you will use it up before then.

For a small glass of pesto you will need: A good blender, three hands full of wild garlic leafs, a hand full of fresh spinach leafs, 50g of nuts of your choice (we usually use walnuts), 30 g of parmesan cheese and roughly 100 ml of a good olive oil. We usually use the “Filipo Berico Classico”, because it’s nice and mild. A good allrounder really.

Dry roast your nuts – nuts contain enough fat so you don’t need to add any oil to your pan. Simply heat the pan and add the nuts, move them around until you can smell them, then add to your blender. Grate the cheese and add it too, wash your leafs, dry them in a salad spinner or in a tea towel and also add them to the blender. Start the blender and slowly add the olive oil, until you have a consistency you like. The pesto should be thick, and not liquid. Add some salt and I also always add a bit of lemon zest, but that’s personal preference. Just like garlic I also very much love lemon. If you want to reduce the amount of fat, you can replace parts of the oil with a bit of vegetable broth, but then it needs to be used up quicker.

Fill your pesto into a clean screw top glass and enjoy.

In the photo you see in this post, we have fried some gnocchi, added a heap of wild garlic pesto, salt, cherry tomatoes and a mild goats cheese, but believe me, you can use it anywhere you’d use garlic. If you’re nut free, simply add a bit more cheese. If you’re dairy free, you can add a little bit of nutritional yeast for the taste or leave it out completely.