This week, I was on holiday in wonderful Petworth with my dear friend E, who I went to stay with last May. It's been a year since she moved there and I had the most wonderful halycon days this week there.
E has really got into gardening, foraging and so when she saw a patch of wild garlic along the path, she invited me to eat one of the flowers which had the most wonderful garlic flavour. She then suggested we make some wild garlic and walnut pesto. I had no idea that making pesto was so easy.
We gathered together:
100g of wild garlic leaves, flowers and stems (wash them well and make sure you pick away from the path in case of dogs...)
100g of walnuts
50g of parmesan cheese grated
80ml of olive oil
Salt and pepper
1. Bash the walnuts inside a freezer bag until they are crushed.
2. Place the (ripped up as we used a mini blender) wild garlic leaves in the blender.
3. Add in the walnuts and parmesan.
4. Blend together until the pieces are small and mixed.
5. Stir in some of the olive oil until a smoother consistency. Add in Salt and pepper as you please.
6. Place in a jar and top with more olive oil to seal the surface from air.
And that was it!
You can do this by hand in a pestle and mortar if you don't want to have to clean out the blender!
We made double the quantity and I took a jar home and we ate the rest for lunch the next day with pasta and cherry tomatoes.
When I returned home from Petworth, I made CBC dinner using the pesto.
Conglichi cooked al-dente combined with wild garlic and walnut pesto. I added steamed broccili nad fried Pak choi and tomatoes.
