What the experts say
Now is the time for wild garlic
Spring is here, says Ameer Kotecha in The Spectator – which means it’s the season for wild garlic, the leafy green with a “sweet, grassy taste” that grows in woodland from March onwards. It was once known as “stinking Jenny”, reflecting our “wariness” of garlic in general. But these days, cooks love it, and foraging for it is increasingly popular. If you’re picking your own, bear in mind that wild garlic looks quite like the poisonous Lily of the Valley. So be guided by smell: “crush a little in your hand and the pungent garlic scent will dispel any doubts”. Aim to pick the most delicate, newer leaves: they have the best flavour. With its taste “somewhere between normal clove garlic and oniony chives”, wild garlic is wonderfully versatile (see recipe, below): it can be wilted into Chinese stir fries, added to risottos or minestrones, used to make pesto, or put in a tortilla. You can also preserve it, to enjoy year round. Chef Bettina Campolucci Bordi advises blending it with oil and freezing it in ice trays, to provide a “hit of flavour for a soup or stew”. Or make (and freeze) wild garlic butter, which is excellent on fish or steak.
How to make food last longer
According to the “waste resources and action programme” Wrap, each of us chucks out about £210 worth of food a year, mainly because “we didn’t eat it on time”, says Xanthe Clay in The Daily
Telegraph. There’s a strong argument for saying that, to combat this problem, we should trust less in food labels and pay more heed to “common sense”. “Best before” and even “use by” dates aren’t infallible guides: a food’s appearance, combined with an old-fashioned “sniff test”, generally tells you whether it’s off. Equally, how long food lasts is influenced by how it’s stored. Eggs last three weeks at room temperature – but around two months in the fridge. Meat lasts better if it’s removed from its plastic packaging and wrapped in greaseproof paper. (Also, store it in the bottom drawer of the fridge – the one usually marked “vegetables”.)
Vegetables outlast their time stamps if stored in paper or cloth bags – not plastic – in the fridge or a cool, dark place. And “don’t throw away shrivelled carrots or mushrooms: these semi-dried treasures taste even better than fresh in soup”.
The best kitchen shortcuts
I was once the sort of person who tried “Michelin-starred cooking at home”, but thankfully those days are behind me, says Tony Turnbull in The Times. I take a far more relaxed approach now, and one thing I’ve learnt to value is the shortcut – the nifty tricks that no one will notice, but which will save you considerable faff. One I recommend is buying jars of pre-pasted garlic and ginger – particularly useful if you cook a lot of Indian dishes. Bart does a good garlic paste; and Waitrose’s Cooks’ Ingredients does a great chopped ginger. You can get red peppers in jars too, which saves untold time in charring and peeling. I generally make my own shortcrust pastry, but making puff from scratch is a “deluded task, born of watching too many episodes of The Great British Bake Off”: my go-to shop-bought version is Dorset Pastry’s pure-butter puff (£5 from Ocado). I also recommend frozen spinach, which saves you having to throw away those halfempty bags of “crushed, slimy leaves”. “I wouldn’t serve it solo, but added frozen to soups, casseroles and dahls it always hits the spot.”