A Sufficiency of Wild Garlic

What is ‘spring’ food? With the daffs in full flower and newborn lambs gambolling in the fields, spring has assuredly sprung. Easter may have been and gone but the ‘new season’s lamb’ touted in the butchers’ shops were born in barns around Christmas time and are unlikely to have seen a blade of grass. Similarly, those peas and broad beans that we see on restaurant menus at this time of year have been grown in Sicily or Spain and been juggernauted up the motorways of Europe to Paris and London.

I am not overexercised on this point. I like to anticipate the seasons and I like to think European. Paris is a great deal closer to London than Inverness. But a true locavore won’t be seeing any peas before June and broad beans even later. Most truly local food in Southern England at this time of year actually represent the tail end of the last year’s season: carrots, leeks, ‘spring’ greens, sprouting broccoli and the like. True, the first genuine outdoor asparagus has just begun to emerge. New potatoes are imminent. Mousserons, or fairy ring mushrooms, can be found in a few greengrocers and in the field by the experienced mycologist. As I write this, I await the arrival of the St George’s mushroom on that saint’s day.