Garlic and Potato Soup

Wild garlic, or ramsons (Allium ursinum), grows like a carpet through the woods around our house in Co. Monaghan, its heady scent perfuming the paths in May. The plant makes an excellent soup, and the leaves can be used as a vegetable, cooked with a little butter and stock. Here I have adapted a recipe devised by Colin Spencer in The New Vegetarian and used ramsons for decorative purposes. If you have no access to wild garlic, use chopped chives instead.