Seasonal Recipes - Penne Pasta with Foraged Wild Garlic & Toasted Nuts

At this time of year the damp woods and tracks of England are carpeted in pungent wild garlic, releasing its mouth-watering scent with every step you make. Now is the moment to forage where you can and are allowed to - in wild, free woodlands rather than from private gardens and streams!

I love it so much that, a few years ago, I was determined to have some in my own bit of woodland garden, free from dirt and pollution and other people’s footsteps. I found some wild plants and dug them up in a very small quantity, transferring them to a couple of spots by our little stream. Within no time at all they had settled into their new environment and were multiplying like mad (be aware of this if you plan to do similar - they will take over if you’re not careful!). I still get excited when the first green blades appear in late April, to be followed soon enough with beautiful tight flower buds, perfect for pickling or going fresh in salads and sauces. Just a few days more and the delightful little white star-like allium flowers will start rising above the green canopy and dancing in the breeze. You can simply admire them, or pick a few and scatter them in a green salad where they look delightful and full of summer hope. 

While May is proving the wettest month for ages, April was the driest. Cold, for sure, but sunny and dry for most of the time. On one such day we were celebrating a friend’s birthday, and given we were to be sitting outside, I thought I would also celebrate the start of the wild garlic season with a quick and easy wild garlic pasta. 

This is how it goes:-

Ingredients - Serves 4

500g packet of penne pasta

Generous bunch of wild garlic leaves

2 fat cloves of fresh garlic, peeled and crushed

A mix of nuts - e.g blanched almonds, hazelnuts, pine nuts (Note: if you have a nut allergy you can leave these out and the dish will still be tasty!)

Freshly grated Parmesan (or Pecorino)

Extra virgin olive oil

Ground salt and black pepper

Method

Bring a large saucepan of salted water to the boil and cook the pasta according to the instructions on the packet. (Note: I would always advise ‘al dente’ so that the pasta retains some structure and bite rather than being soft and flabby. To add interest, you can use a 50% whole wheat pasta which is not as ‘intense’ as fully whole wheat - Napolina do a great 50:50 version , available in most good supermarkets.)

Meanwhile, wash and dry the wild garlic leaves and tear or cut them up in to rustic size pieces (not too small or you will lose the hit of flavour and the visual impact).

Take the selection of nuts you are using, as suggested above. If you do not have all of those in your store cupboard, just use those that you have. If they are not already chopped and toasted, then dry roast them (don’t be tempted to use any oil - they have enough within them to toast) in a heavy based pan on the hob (you can use a lighter saucepan or frying pan if you don’t have a heavy based one but just watch they don’t catch and burn). I would suggest using about half a cupful with the quantities above to add a decent amount of texture and flavour to the dish. Chop them as necessary when they are brown and toasty. 

Drain the pasta when it is cooked (Tip: add a burst of water from the cold tap before you drain the pasta - it helps coagulate the starch so they don’t go all sticky). Return to the saucepan with a knob of butter (or olive oil), the nuts and the crushed garlic and toss it around on a very low heat just to combine and retain some heat in the pasta. Finally quickly stir in the garlic leaves so that they remain essentially fresh rather than too wilted (wilting diminishes the flavour of them). Stir in some Parmesan and serve into warmed bowls - or a large warmed serving bowl if you’re being posh! 

Have some good quality extra virgin olive oil on the table, together with more freshly grated parmesan and  salt and black pepper grinders for everyone to add the extras in the quantities they wish. 

So that’s it! Very simple, very quick, very tasty. The joy of Italian food....

Wine Accompaniment:-

After the obligatory glass of celebratory Prosecco, we enjoyed this pasta dish with a bottle of chilled Italian ‘Pecorino’ white wine, widely available. The bottles shown in the photo below are available from Waitrose at £7.99 . Morrison’s also have a version of it in their The Best range retailing at £6.75.

Its name means ‘little sheep’ and it is thought to have come to be called that due to the fact that the sheep in the Abruzzo and Marche regions of Italy where it is mostly grown enjoyed a little munch on the grapes when they came down from higher pastures! Serendipitously this wine goes rather well with the Pecorino cheese which is made from ewe’s milk and is often used as an alternative to Parmesan. Indeed, you could happily swap the Parmesan in the recipe above for Pecorino!