MAIN PHOTOGRAPH: ANDREW MONTGOMERY
0ur season-defining ravioli recipe is thrifty yet special, with a filling made from wonderful wild garlic - a great excuse to escape outside and forage for free food. If you’re not up for that, you can use a mix of spinach and garlic instead. As for the pasta, it’s so easy to buy that making it from scratch can seem a faff, but the joy is in the process. The ritual of resting, rolling and shaping results in a plate of food to relish with pride. Serve with our fancy garnishes or simply drizzle with oil and add a sprinkling of parmesan - your choice
“Take time to stop and breathe in the heady scent”
Food writer Lauren Bravo revels in foraging for the perfect partner for pasta, mash and more “I never used to understand what cookery writers meant when they described flavours as ‘bright’. Not until the first time I stirred wild garlic leaves into a pan of pasta with a little lemon zest and olive oil, watching them wilt, resisting the urge to pile on extras - chilli! Cheese! Hang on, peanut butter? - then sat down to eat. Slowly, paying attention to each vivid mouthful. The way people who have climbed a steep bank, wiped muddy hands on their jeans and whistled all the way home with a full Tupperware in their bag should eat.
As food seasons go, this is a fleeting one.
Officially, wild garlic grows between March and June,but in my neck of the woods it’s usually gone by the beginning of May. Of course it is, because my neck of the woods is not the woods, it’s London. It’s hard to shake the competitive urge: “First come, first gets the Pret sandwich they wanted.” And the same applies to nature’s bounty.
Wild garlic is found in damp woodland and riverbanks, but my friend Tara first spotted my local crop on a scrubby strip of disused railway line and taught me to identify it by its pointed green leaves, delicate white flowers and the tell-tale hum of dinner in the air. She was furious, having just paid £3 for a bunch from Ocado. Years later, it still feels thrilling to eat something free, straight from the ground - not doused in chlorine and wrapped in plastic. Have I washed it enough? Is that a fleck of wholesome mud, or something more sinister? Wild garlic also opened my eyes to the beauty of seasonal eating. Not just because seasonal produce is more delicious, which it usually is, or for the environmental benefits, although of course they’re urgent - but for something else.
The relief of knowing exactly what I want to eat, and when.
Most of the time I suffer from ‘decision fatigue’: the privileged modern affliction that leaves us paralysed by too much choice.
Waiters have been hired, scored an acting gig and left again in the time it sometimes takes me to order lunch. It’s why I love the small window of wild garlic season.
You have to seize it, no dithering, and enjoy it while you can. There’s a luxury in handing back the menu and making Mother Nature your maître d’.
Of course, my annual harvest has taken on a greater symbolism over this past year. During lockdown I haven’t been able to climb distant hills, see the sea or hug my parents, but I have walked.
A lot. Small patches of urban greenery have become a precious link to the lush countryside beyond the M25. Seeing the seasonal bloom-and-wither is proof that the world still turns.
So at the end of last month and all through April, the fridge and I will reek of it and everything will taste of it. That verdant tang. It’s not the sexy, Mediterranean heat of regular garlic; it’s fresher and grassier, somewhere left of a chive. It tastes of wet Sunday walks, dewy hedgerows and the promise of warmth to come.