FROM PATCH TO PLATE: MATTHEW FORT Our food

MY ENGLISH HOME Matthew Fort FROM PATCH TO PLATE

The food writer and critic praises the art of foraging and shares his deceptively simple ideas for conjuring elegant dishes with fresh, free finds from the woodlands this month

There’s the purple sprouting broccoli, the first unfurled leaves of sorrel, and the rhubarb, but that is it as far as my garden is concerned. In my experience, April is the month of promise rather than delivery. Expectation is high and anticipation higher, but patience is called for before the first proper harvest can begin.

So what’s a chap to do? Well, we’re told we should exercise our bodies as well as our minds, and as spring is leaping into action, sap rising, rays of sunshine and hope of a less cloistered life beginning to dawn and all that, there’s all the more reason to get out and fossick about in field, hedgerow and wood looking for early foraging foods.

First among them must be wild garlic – or ramsons to give its English name (from the Old English hramsan) – because it is the easiest to find. Indeed, there are parts of the country, such as where I live in Gloucestershire, where it is difficult to avoid. Sometimes I think wild garlic is taking over the world. Whisper it, but wild garlic is a bit of a bully. It is so vigorous that it takes over the ground also preferred by our native bluebells. But as you can’t eat bluebells, and wild garlic has multiple culinary uses, this may not be thought a bad thing. Personally, I like a woodland where there’s room for both.

As its Latin classification, allium ursinum, suggests, wild garlic is a member of the onion family, and whilst its garlic flavour is mild, it is quite penetrating all the same. Its shiny, dark green, sharply pointed leaves are very distinctive, and can be picked in their hundreds or thousands if you have the patience, without fear of them ever going extinct. There is little of a wild garlic plant that isn’t edible. I’ll come round to what to do with the leaves in a moment, but its flowers, which look like tiny, white, exploding supernovas, can be added to salads, and the cluster of small bulbs from which the leaves and flowers grow just below ground can be pickled.

However, it is the leaves that are most likely to be come across, so here are a few ideas for what to do with them:

- Chop finely and add to butter for wild garlic butter - Grind up with salt for wild garlic salt - Purée and add to mayonnaise - Make wild garlic and nettle soup - Toss whole leaves over roast potatoes fresh out of the oven - Make wild garlic risotto - Mix with eggs for a wild garlic omelette

Rather rarer, and so, perhaps, more treasured, particularly by chefs and discerning gastronomes, is the great spring mushroom – the morel. It is a curious looking number, like a giant thimble, corrugated like a coral, but made of brown rubber. Even for a mushroom, it’s a bit odd, but as an eater, there’s not much to beat it at this time of the year. It is famously best combined with chicken – the flavour of chicken and morels cooked inside a sealed pot with madeira at Le

Gavroche still haunts my memory like a ghost of immeasurable charm and elegance. Over the years I have heard reports of morels being found here and there in abundance, but I’ve only ever found one. And one morel isn’t really enough to feast on. However, if you’re lucky enough to stumble across a trove of them, don’t wash

WILD GARLIC GREEN SAUCE

My favourite wild garlic recipe is for a versatile green sauce (not pesto, which is made with basil – or should be).

INGREDIENTS

Handful of wild garlic leaves (at least 40) 1 hard-boiled egg 1 tbsp capers 6 cornichons 2 tbsp white wine vinegar (or vinegar from cornichons) ½ tsp mustard powder 125ml rape seed oil salt and pepper

METHOD

• Put all the ingredients into a bowl.

Wizz them up until chunky cut, smooth or somewhere in between, as you like it. And that’s it. Could hardly be simpler. Use with fish and chicken.

them but clean them carefully, fry them in butter, anoint them with cream, sprinkle them with parsley, pile them on toast and eat them all yourself. ■

NB When foraging for wild food, it is imperative to correctly identify what it is, otherwise it should not be eaten.

About Matthew Best known as a judge on BBC2’s Great British Menu, Matthew is an award-winning food writer and critic. He was the Food & Drink Editor of The Guardian for 15 years and is the author of four books.