Roast garlic

I noticed last week that although I've included roast garlic as an ingredient in a few recipes here (use the search tool at the top right of the page if you want to try some when you've made this), I've never dedicated a post to it. This needs to be addressed, because roast garlic, slipped out of its skins onto crusty bread and popped straight into the mouth, still warm, is one of those things that tastebuds were invented for.

Roast garlic is at its best when you use a bulb of fresh (or 'green') garlic - not dried, like the papery garlic you usually buy in the supermarket, but still cream, green and pink, with flexible, cool-feeling skin. Some markets and supermarkets carry it at this time of year and also around October. I've seen it in Sainsbury's, Waitrose and the main market in Cambridge, so with a bit of sniffing around (it is very pungent) you should be able to find some. If it's out of season, never fear; you can also use a dried bulb, and it will still be very good indeed. If you do use dried garlic, try to find a variety that has big, fat cloves. The Really Garlicky Company do a fantastic product, and you can sometimes order fresh garlic from them as well (currently their website says it should be ready in July). As well as mail order, they have a stockists list on the page. Their Patagonian garlic is available in my local Waitrose, and it's a very superior bulb with huge, juicy cloves which are fragrant and easy to peel.

Picking out herbs to cook with the garlic is fun. I've used thyme, oregano, parsley, rosemary and bay from the garden, but you're not limited to these. Sage is also good, and it's worth experimenting with whatever green herbs you have to hand. The odd chilli tucked between the cloves can also be good. I've used butter to lubricate here, but goose or duck fat is also glorious in this dish. If you decide to use some, use 200g duck fat and 200g butter.

We are greedy when faced with roast garlic, and can get through three bulbs each with some good bread. You may find that six bulbs will happily serve three, or want to keep a couple back as an ingredient for a later recipe. To roast six bulbs you'll need:

Six bulbs green garlic
3 bay leaves
1 small handful each fresh thyme, oregano and parsley (reserve a little parsley to garnish at the end)
3 large sprigs rosemary
250g butter
Olive oil to drizzle
Salt and pepper

Slice each bulb of garlic in half across its equator and arrange in a heavy-bottomed roasting tin, tucking the clean spices all around the garlic. Make sure some of the pieces of garlic have their cut sides in the air, and some against the roasting tin, for a lovely variation in texture and stickiness. Dot the butter all over them (I know this is a lot of fat, but you'll thank me when you taste what's at the bottom of the dish when you're done cooking) and drizzle a couple of tablespoons of olive oil over to moisten any non-buttery bits. Sprinkle over salt and pepper.

Roast for 40 minutes at 180° C, opening the oven to baste the garlic with the juices three or four times. The house will smell strongly, so open a window. When the garlic is done, the ends of the cloves should be a gorgeous caramel brown. Serve the bulbs up immediately with some really good bread and a little salt for everyone to spike their own garlic with, keeping the cooking dish on the table for dipping in the juices (possibly the most delicious cooking liquid ever). You should be able to pop each clove out of its skin easily, and mash it onto the bread with the ends of a fork.

Roast garlic and a jar of infused honey

I managed to get my hands on a couple of bulbs of fat, golden, oak-smoked garlic this weekend. (Cambridgeshire readers should head straight over to the River Farm Smokery in Bottisham for more smoked goodies.) It's beautifully pungent stuff; years ago, I bought a plait of smoked garlic for my parents, who ended up having to keep it in the garage to prevent the whole house from taking on a smoky, garlicky taint. If you've not tried smoked garlic before, it's pretty easy to imagine, but the reality is always a little startling. This is a fiercely flavoursome product. You can make a little go a long way, but I really like to use whole cloves of it in casseroles or around roast dishes. Much of this bulb found itself being used in a roast lamb dish with beans - just follow this recipe and add about eight whole cloves of smoked garlic in place of the chopped fresh stuff - you'll need a couple of extra cloves to stuff into the skin of the lamb as well.

When garlic is smoked, its cloves soften a little and turn a lovely buttery yellow. The smoking process forces some of the natural sugars in the garlic cloves to bead on the surface of the clove, under the papery skin, becoming sticky, tacky and sweet. You can use these cloves wherever you'd use raw garlic; the whole bulb is also exceptionally good roasted. Try making roast garlic and fresh tomato pasta with a smoked bulb for great depth of flavour. I really like the roast cloves popped out of their skins and spread on a good crusty bread, sprinkled with a little salt. The squashed, roast cloves are also fantastic stirred into mashed potatoes.

Smoked garlic and honey are two flavours which, for me, seem to have been invented for each other. I kept five cloves of the garlic back to make a jar of smoked garlic honey baste. To make your own, you'll need a jar of honey (mine is some of our local wildflower honey - anything with a delicate, flowery flavour will do, though; try clover, orange blossom or lime blossom honey) and five unblemished cloves of smoked garlic. Empty the jar of honey into a saucepan and warm it with a jam thermometer in the pan until it reaches 100° C. Put the whole garlic cloves at the bottom of a sterilised jar and pour the hot honey over them, then cover and refrigerate. The garlic will start to give its smoky fragrance up to the honey almost immediately, and the honey will have a noticeable flavour after a day or so, but for best results the jar should be left for around a month before using. Brush the infused honey over meats before roasting or grilling, use as a surprisingly delicious dressing for baked apples, or spread on some toast and nibble with a glass of whisky for a midnight snack.

Fragrant garlic-grilled pork medallions

This is a great dish for those trying to avoid too much fat in their diet. Pork fillet is a very lean (and pleasingly inexpensive) cut of meat, but marinated and grilled like this it stays moist. It's delicious, especially if you allow the edges to caramelise under the hot grill, and is a brilliant dish for garlic lovers.

One fillet will serve two people. For every fillet you cook, you'll need:

1 pork fillet
4 tablespoons light soya sauce
2 tablespoons dark soya sauce
4 tablespoons oyster sauce
2 tablespoons hoi sin sauce
2 tablespoons soft brown sugar
1 red chilli
1 head garlic
Coriander or spring onion to garnish

Slice the long fillet into discs about a centimetre thick. Place in a bowl with the sauces, honey, sliced chilli and finely chopped garlic, stir well to coat and leave in the fridge overnight.

Place the medallions of pork under a hot grill or on a barbecue, and cook for four minutes per side, basting with the marinade. Bring any remaining marinade to the boil in a small pan, and use as a thick sauce. Serve over rice, with some crisp steamed vegetables.

Sticky Thai garlic-chilli prawns

One of the things the area I live in really lacks is a good fishmonger. As a result, raw prawns with the shells still on are very hard to find, so whenever I spot them in the supermarket I grab about six bags and freeze them.

Why do I want to keep the shells on, you ask? It's perfectly simple; cooked like this, the shells not only add rich flavour to the flesh of the prawns, but become delicious in their own right. They're a little crunchy, a little chewy, and extremely tasty, so don't bother peeling your prawn - eat it shell and all. I wish my prawns has also had heads (ask any Chinese person; the head is the best bit), but head-on raw prawns are increasingly hard to find these days.

I was planning on barbecuing these little guys, but the summer of torrential rain shows no signs of abating, and I've barely been able to use the barbecue at all this year. If the weather's this bad where you are, put the prawns under the conventional grill. Lucky readers living where there's sunshine and enough warmth to eat outdoors should drag out the barbecue for this one.

To cook enough prawns for a very substantial meal for two (or a sensibly sized meal for three) you'll need:

500g raw, defrosted prawns with the shells on (raw frozen prawns will be blue-grey, not pink)
4 tablespoons light soya sauce
2 tablespoons sweet dark soya sauce (kejap manis)
4 tablespoons oyster sauce
2 tablespoons Thai fish sauce
2 tablespoons honey
1 bird's eye chilli
1 head garlic
1 large handful coriander, chopped

Use a sharp knife to butterfly the prawns - make a slit between the prawn's legs from the base of the tail to the place where the head was, slicing through the flesh, but not through the shell on the prawn's back. Flatten the prawns out with your hand. Cutting the prawns like this will maximise the surface area, helping them to take up the flavour of the marinade.

Mince all the cloves from the head of garlic with a large, sharp knife. (This is very easy - just lay the cloves on a chopping board and, holding the knife at the tip and the hilt and using a rocking motion, 'walk' the blade up and down the board for about five minutes. You'll find the garlic is chopped finely and evenly. It's probably not best to eat this immediately before going on a date.) Chop the chilli finely and mix it and the garlic with all the liquid ingredients. Stir the marinade mixture well to blend everything, then tip the prawns in, stirring to make sure they're well covered. Refrigerate for 40 minutes. This is quite a penetrating marinade, so don't leave the prawns for more than an hour or they will taste too strong.

When you are ready to cook the prawns, reserve the marinade and place them on a barbecue or under a very hot grill for three or four minutes per side, until they turn pink and the skins start to caramelise a little. Meanwhile, bring the marinade to a strong boil for about thirty seconds. Drizzle a little of the wonderfully garlicky cooked marinade over the prawns to serve, and dress with plenty of fresh coriander...and remember to eat those delicious shells!

Chicken Kiev

This is a rather special Chicken Kiev. It has a super-crisp coating and is bursting with a garlic butter full of extra flavours. (You will notice that I am overdosing a little on saffron rice at the moment. It's lovely with chicken dishes - just cook your rice as usual, but add a large pinch of saffron, which you've soaked in an eggcup of water from the kettle for twenty minutes, with the rest of the cooking water.)

The flavoured butter carefully packed inside this chicken (and balancing cheekily on top of that lovely saffron rice) is worth making in bulk and keeping in the freezer. You can slice it direct from the frozen roll and use it to melt over steaks, to baste roast chickens, to flavour couscous, to fill a baked potato, and anywhere you need rich flavour and lovely moist butteryness. If roasting the garlic for the butter is just too much faff for you, use an extra three cloves of raw garlic instead.

Use the largest chicken breasts you can find for this recipe; this will make it much easier to keep the pool of butter inside the bird until you cut it on your plate. Waitrose is currently selling a chicken called the Poulet d'Or - a massive and delicious behemoth of a bird which grows slowly (and ethically, at Leckford Farm, an enterprise owned by Waitrose's parent company) - it's fed an organic, corn-rich diet, allowed to forage and roam free, and is slaughtered at around 90 days rather than the usual four weeks. It's a big bird, but it's tender and extremely flavourful - I've read comparisons to Poulet de Bresse, and for special occasions I will be very happy to spend the £12 again on two breasts. (A whole bird comes in at about twice that price, but I'd estimate that it would very happily feed six people, so the effective price is high but not unreasonable.)

To make half a pound of garlic and herb butter, and two Chicken Kievs, you'll need:

Garlic and herb butter
1 pat of good, salted butter (2 sticks in America), plus a tablespoon of butter to roast the garlic
1 head of garlic (to roast)
3 cloves of garlic (to be kept raw)
2 bay leaves
1 large sprig thyme
1 tablespoon chopped fresh tarragon
1 tablespoon chopped fresh chervil (leave this out if you can't find any)
1 tablespoon chopped fresh parsley
1 fresh red chilli
½ teaspoon paprika
Juice and zest of 1 lemon
1 tablespoon light soya sauce
Large pinch of salt

Chicken
2 large chicken breasts, skinned and boned
Crumbs from two slices of white bread (blend in a food processor to make crumbs)
An equal volume of polenta or cornmeal
5 tablespoons grated parmesan
4 extra tablespoons polenta or cornmeal
2 eggs, beaten
Salt and pepper
1 teaspoon chilli flakes

Start by roasting the garlic for the butter. Slice the bulb of garlic in half across its equator and put the tablespoon of butter, the bay leaves and the thyme on the cut side of the bottom half, seasoning generously. Place the top half of the garlic bulb on top, making a herby sandwich. Roast at 180° C for 40 minutes. Remove from the oven and cool.

Pop the soft, roast cloves of garlic out into the food processor, and add the raw garlic; the tarragon, parsley, chervil and basil; the chilli and paprika; the lemon zest and juice; and the soya sauce. Drop in the half pound of butter and blend until everything is amalgamated and finely chopped into the butter.

Make a long sausage of the flavoured butter on a piece of tin foil. Wrap tightly and place in the freezer for at least an hour.

When the butter has chilled, start on the chicken. Begin by combining the breadcrumbs and an equal volume of polenta in one bowl with the parmesan and chilli flakes. Put the four tablespoons of polenta in a separate bowl, and beat the eggs in a final bowl.

Take your smallest knife. Sharpen it vigorously. Use it to make a slit down the side of one chicken breast, creating a pocket inside the muscle. Be very careful not to cut all the way through. Remove the little fillet strip from underneath the breast and set it to one side.

Slice a disc of butter from the frozen butter sausage and tuck it inside the pocket. You may be able to fit more than one disc in, but be careful not to overstuff the breast, or the butter will leak out in cooking. If the butter sticks out at all, just trim it carefully so it's firmly inside the meaty pocket.

Dip the fillet strip in the polenta, then back in the egg. Dip the chicken breast in the polenta, then the egg, and sprinkle the area where the slit is with a bit of extra polenta. Use the polenta and egg to glue the fillet strip around the slit. Roll the whole sticky assembly in the breadcrumbs mixture, patting plenty on around the slit/fillet area to make a good seal and ensuring everything is covered well. Repeat the process with the other breast.

Heat two tablespoons of butter and two of olive oil in a heavy, large frying pan. Bring the pan to a high temperature and carefully slide the chicken pieces in, slit/fillet area facing down. Turn the heat down to just below medium and leave the chicken breasts for 15 minutes, without poking or moving. After 15 minutes, flip them over (the bottoms will have turned an amazing golden crisp) and leave for another 15 minutes. Serve immediately. The melted butter will have formed a delicious pool inside the chicken breasts, and will pool out when you slice into the meat with your knife. Make sure you have plenty of rice to soak it all up.

Salt and pepper prawns

This Chinese appetiser is one of my favourites, and it's surprisingly easy to make at home. Szechuan peppercorns are toasted in a dry pan until they release their amazing fragrance, then combined with flours and some other seasonings to make a feathery crisp and light coating for the prawns. Garlic and aromatic spring onions (scallions for American readers) are dusted in the flour coating and fried, making a crisp and delicious garnish for the prawns.

Those American readers are probably also wondering what these prawn things I'm on about are. Sometimes these linguistic differences become downright annoying. The United Nations (not somewhere I usually visit for culinary advice, but surprisingly helpful in this instance) informs me that:

...in Great Britain the term "shrimp" is the more general of the two, and is the only term used for Crangonidae and most smaller species. "Prawn" is the more special of the two names, being used solely for Palaemondiae and larger forms, never for the very small ones.

In North America the name "prawn" is practically obsolete and is almost entirely replaced by the word "shrimp" (used for even the largest species, which may be called "jumbo shrimp"). If the word "prawn" is used at all in America it is attached to small species.

So there you have it. Every time I say 'prawn', please substitute 'large shrimp about the size of your thumb, once the head has been removed', and get frying. For salt and pepper shrimp for two, you'll need:

500g raw, shelled prawns
2 tablespoons Szechuan peppercorns
1 tablespoon freshly ground black pepper
3 tablespoons rice flour (rice flour will give your coating an amazing crispness)
3 tablespoons cornflour
2 tablespoons fleur de sel, Maldon salt or any salt with a flaky, crystalline form
4 spring onions (scallions)
6 cloves garlic
Flavourless oil to shallow fry

Begin by toasting the Szechuan peppercorns over a medium flame in a dry frying pan until they start to release their fragrance (about 4 minutes). Combine the toasted whole peppercorns in a large bowl with the black pepper, rice flour, cornflour and salt. This sounds like a great deal of salt, but this dish requires a lot, and you may actually find that you want to sprinkle a little more over at the end, so be generous.

Chop the garlic very roughly, and slice the spring onions into little discs.

De-vein (actually de-intestine) the prawns if you want - if I am confident with the source of my shellfish, I don't usually bother. Dredge them in the seasoned flour. Heat up a 2cm depth of oil in a thick-bottomed pan, and fry the prawns in small batches when the heat is searingly hot, turning until the coating is golden and crisp. Transfer to a kitchen paper-covered plate in a warm oven to drain and keep warm as the other prawns are cooking.

When all the prawns are ready, dredge the garlic and spring onions in the seasoned flour, using a slotted spoon to remove them from the flour bowl. Saute them in the oil you cooked the prawns in until their coating is also turning golden. Remove from the oil with the rinsed and dried slotted spoon and place on kitchen paper to remove any excess oil.

Arrange the prawns on plates, sprinkle over the onion and garlic mixture, and serve immediately.

Pasta with anchovy crumbs and gremolata

A great no-money recipe for the end of the month, when all the money has gone on beer and skittles. You probably have all these ingredients in the storecupboard already. This is a fiercely savoury dish, where the contrasting textures of crisply fried anchovy breadcrumbs and the soft pasta come together to make something really special.

Gremolata is a bit like a salsa verde - a finely-chopped Italian mixture of herbs, lemon zest and something sharp like capers. It's delicious with meats, and I love it with this pasta, where its freshness lifts the richness of the crumbs and infused oil.

It's important that you choose a good, well-flavoured olive oil for this recipe. Although it is tempting to use the oil you fried the crumbs in for infusing the garlic and chilli, it's best to use fresh extra-virgin olive oil instead. The heat that the breadcrumbs oil is subject to over the cooking period will change its flavour slightly, and you'll find you achieve a much fresher, more aromatic flavour from the infusing oil if you use a fresh batch and only allow it to warm gently.

To serve two you'll need:

2 slices white bread
8 anchovy fillets
4 fat cloves garlic
4 dried chillies
1 small handful parsley
1 small handful basil
Zest of 1 lemon
2 teaspoons capers
2 servings of your favourite pasta
Parmesan cheese to taste
Salt and pepper
Plenty of olive oil

Put the bread in the food processor and whizz until you've got coarse breadcrumbs. In a large frying pan, fry the anchovies in about half a centimetre of olive oil until they 'melt' and come to pieces. Add the breadcrumbs to the pan, stir them well to combine them with the anchovies, and add more olive oil to the pan until the breadcrumbs are just covered. (Don't worry; we'll be draining this oil later.) At this point, the contents of the pan will look like a wet mess. Turn the heat to medium and leave, stirring every minute or so: gradually the wet mess will turn into golden, crisp, anchovy flavoured crumbs (10-15 minutes). Turn the oil and breadcrumbs into a sieve and leave the sieve over a bowl for ten minutes for as much oil to drain out as possible.

While the crumbs are cooking, prepare the infused oil by crushing the garlic and frying it gently in a little olive oil until it releases its scent (about thirty seconds). Remove from the heat and add half a wine glass of extra-virgin olive oil to the pan. Bash the chillies in a mortar and pestle until they are flaked and add them to the oil. Return the pan to the heat and warm the oil gently, then leave it in a warm place to infuse until the pasta is ready to be served.

To prepare the gremolata, chop the herbs finely, and mix with the lemon zest and chopped capers in a small bowl. This is one of the rare occasions where I prefer capers preserved in a briny vinegar to the salted kind - use whatever you have to hand.

Cook the pasta as usual, drain and return to the pan you cooked it in. Pour over the garlic and chilli oil, then spoon into serving bowls. Dress generously with the crumbs and gremolata, check for seasoning, and serve with lots of parmesan cheese to grate over.

Aubergine caviar

This eggplant caviar recipe is a great way to squeeze every ounce of flavour out of an aubergine. It's extremely easy to make if you have a food processor (and only a little more difficult if you don't; I used to make it when I was a student using a large knife to chop everything very finely instead). Although the amount of garlic in this recipe looks a bit alarming, the garlic in the finished dip is roasted, so it's very mellow and sweet. You won't find it overpowering.

Traditionally called 'caviar' or 'poor man's caviar', this is not at all fishy, nor very similar to caviar. I think it got the name from the days when aubergines were much seedier; those seeds have a lovely texture a little (if you are imagining hard) like fish roe. Today, aubergines are usually propagated without the seeds, which many people do not enjoy.

This is a particularly good accompaniment for lamb, and it's really, really good with yesterday's kofta kebab. The roast aubergine has a wonderful natural sweetness, brought out by the raw parsley, which seems made to be paired with hot lamb. Try it some time.

To serve four as a mezze you'll need:

2 large purple aubergines (eggplants)
10 fat cloves garlic
1 large bunch parsley
2 tablespoons extra-virgin olive oil
Salt and freshly ground pepper

Cut both aubergines in half lengthways. Don't bother salting and disgorging it - the same growing techniques which have made modern aubergines near-seedless have also made sure they aren't bitter. Peel the garlic, lay the whole cloves on the cut side of the aubergines, and wrap each aubergine half with its garlic tightly in tin foil. Bake on a sheet at 180° C for 45 minutes, until the garlic and aubergines are very soft.

Peel the skin from the aubergines and discard it. Use a food processor or very sharp knife to finely mince the garlic, aubergine flesh and parsley. Stir in the olive oil. Add salt and pepper to taste and serve at room temperature.

Aubergine caviar will keep in the fridge for a few days. Try it on its own on toast for a quick lunch.

Smacked cucumber

This is as closely as I've been able to duplicate the wonderful cucumber salad at Fuchsia Dunlop's Bar Shu. It's an easy accompaniment and it's great at cutting through rich flavours. The dressing keeps for a week in the fridge; try making a double amount and keeping half for a really quick salad later in the week.

The smacking of the cucumber is an important first step in this recipe. It opens cracks up in the flesh of the vegetable for the dressing to seep into, and means that when you salt the cucumber, there will be more surface area for its liquid to escape from. I use the flat edge of my Chinese cleaver to wallop the cucumber, but you can use a rolling pin if you don't own a cleaver.

To smack enough for four (although we can easily demolish this amount between two) you'll need:

1 large cucumber
2 teaspoons soft brown sugar
4 cloves fresh garlic
2 tablespoons rice wine vinegar
1 teaspoon soya sauce
1 tablespoon toasted sesame oil
1 teaspoon Chinese chilli oil (leave this out if you prefer your cucumber not to be spicy)
Salt to sprinkle

Lay the cucumber on a wooden board and slap it hard with the flat of a cleaver until cracks have opened up all along it. Chop the cucumber into bite-sized pieces, put in a colander and sprinkle with salt to disgorge some of the liquid from the flesh.

Meanwhile, chop the garlic finely and mix it with the sugar, soy and rice vinegar until the sugar is dissolved. Add the oils and set aside.

When the cucumber has been draining for 40 minutes, pat it dry with kitchen paper and place on a large flat plate. Sprinkle over the stirred dressing and serve immediately.

Garlic mashed potatoes

I love mashed potatoes, and I love garlic. Put the two together, and you've got the perfect starch to accompany a roast chicken, a steak or - pish! - whatever protein you fancy.

The garlic mash you'll find in some restaurants is a bit questionable. Some places skimp, and use powdered garlic, which is a total disaster, leaving the dish tasting musty and somehow unpleasantly acidic. Try making it this way at home for a much mellower, smoother taste.

You'll need:

8 white potatoes (Desiree mash best - Maris Piper are also good)
1 whole head of garlic, peeled
2 oz butter
¼ pint milk
1 large handful freshly chopped parsley
Salt and pepper to taste

Put the peeled potatoes and the peeled garlic in a thick-based saucepan, and cover with water. Bring the water to the boil and simmer for 15 minutes. Drain, and return the potatoes and garlic to the pan.

Mash the potatoes and garlic with the butter while you bring the milk to a simmer in a separate pan. Use a wooden spoon to beat the milk into the mashed potatoes, and then stir the finely chopped parsley through the dish with the seasoning. Serve immediately.

Roast garlic and fresh tomato sauce for pasta

A quick and dirty recipe for gardeners with a glut of garlic and tomatoes. This pasta sauce makes the most of each ingredient - the garlic is roast for a sweet, fragrant mellow taste, and the tomatoes, fresh and juicy out of the garden. I am having unbelievable success this year with Tumbler tomatoes, which do very well in a pot.

If you're cooking this for guests, you may want to seed and peel the tomatoes, but we enjoy the tomatoes in this just chopped into chunks. I used angel hair pasta - use whatever's in your cupboard.

To serve two, you'll need:

1 bulb garlic
1 large knob butter
1 tablespoon olive oil
1 small handful thyme
1 small handful oregano
1 large handful basil
1 lb tomatoes, chopped roughly
Salt and pepper

Roast the garlic whole with the thyme and oregano tucked around it, the butter and olive oil smeared and drizzled over it, for 40 minutes at 180° C. When the garlic comes out of the oven, set it aside to cool a little while you put the pasta on to cook and cut the tomatoes into large dice.

Squeeze the soft cloves of garlic out of their hard skins into a serving bowl. If your garlic is very fresh, you can leave the skins in to nibble on too. Mine was straight out of the ground, so the skins went into the bowl. Tear the basil roughly and put it in the bowl along with the herbs, butter and oil from the garlic dish and the tomatoes. Season with salt and pepper, and put the steaming hot pasta on top of everything. Mix gently and serve immediately.

Chicken wrapped in wild garlic leaves and pancetta

Thanks to Kalyn for hosting Weekend Herb Blogging (and I'm sorry I've not taken part in a while; the winter has made herb blogging a real stretch of the imagination in the UK!)

Wild garlic isn't the same plant as the garlic you buy in the supermarket. It belongs to the same family, but wild garlic (Allium Ursinum) has a tiny bulb with no separate cloves, soft leaves and a strong smell but a gentle flavour. Cultivated garlic (Allium Sativum) is a tougher-looking plant, with larger, much more pungent bulbs, and without the soft leaves, instead growing leaves a bit like a leek.

The leaves of wild garlic look a little like the leaves of lily of the valley; a little less glossy and rather softer, but similarly strap-like. In late spring and summer, their extremely pretty white, star-shaped flowers appear - they're also edible, and are very good as a garnish or in salads. The abundant leaves are very strongly scented, so if you are walking in a wood where there is a patch, you'll be able to find it with your nose before you spot it. Pick in winter and spring; the plant dies down after flowering. The bruising that happens when you pick the leaf makes the smell even stronger, so don't leave the container you've put your leaves in in the back of the car- consign them to the boot. This smell (and the flavour) becomes softer and sweeter when the leaves are cooked. The leaves will keep raw for several days in the fridge.

I picked a bag of the leaves in Yorkshire, in my mother-in-law's garden. Wild garlic spreads like crazy, especially in damp shade, and it's considered a weed when found in gardens. I also dug two clumps and their accompanying soil up, and put them in pots in my own garden. I'm not going to plant them in the ground, because I have a feeling that if I follow my garlicky instincts, in a couple of years I may end up with an all-garlic garden, which isn't a good look.

Try the leaves in a salad to taste them at their freshest. They'll also cook beautifully in the same way as spinach (as in the side-dish I prepared to accompany this chicken - saute mushrooms in butter, and add the leaves towards the end, stirring until wilted, then add lemon juice, cayenne pepper and salt), but I think I've found the perfect application for them in this chicken and pancetta parcel. I'm very, very pleased with this recipe - if you can get your hands on any wild garlic, give it a try.

You'll need (per person):

1 chicken breast fillet
5 slices pancetta
1 handful fresh wild garlic leaves
Pepper
1 knob butter

Lay the slices of pancetta out in a rectangle on a piece of greaseproof paper. The slices should overlap so there are no gaps. Lay the wild garlic leaves all over the top, then place the chicken breast on top of that. Grind pepper all over the chicken (you don't need any salt; the pancetta will be salty enough on its own) and use the greaseproof paper to wrap the pancetta and garlic leaves around the chicken, as if you were rolling a Swiss roll. Use toothpicks to secure the ends of the pancetta.

Melt the butter in a heavy-bottomed, non-stick pan, and when it starts to bubble, saute the wrapped fillets for eight minutes each side. (Start by cooking the presentation side - the one without toothpicks - first.) Garnish with some wilted leaves and pour over the pan juices.

I served the chicken with roast new potatoes, the mushrooms and garlic leaves described above, and a bottle of Pouilly Fuisse. Delicious.

Herb, halloumi and green garlic salad

Wandering through Sainsbury's this evening, I saw a shelf full of fresh garlic. I spent a whole five seconds or so wondering how they'd managed to get hold of fresh garlic in March, and then (I'm being slow today) thought to read the label. It's from Egypt. Now, usually, I wouldn't buy an overpriced, overpackaged single bulb that had flown such a long way to get to me . . . but as I continued my shopping, my mind kept going back to the garlic. After being slightly snappish with the lady at the fish counter about the pathetic lack of shellfish, I finally left self-control at the vegetable counter and bought a single bulb.

Here it is, the thick outer skin peeled off. You can see each individual clove in place; the green tendrils growing in a point from each become the white, straw-like threads you'll recognise on the cloves of ordinary, cured garlic you have in your kitchen cupboard. When green, these tendrils are edible and very tasty; imagine a garlicky spring onion.

This year, I'm growing a lot of garlic for eating fresh in the garden; it's sweeter, more fragrant and less harsh than the dry product. (I'm planning to have a go at curing my own this year if I manage to raise enough in the garden.) This fresh garlic roasts to a sweet, delectable paste, perfect spread on sourdough bread or stirred into a sauce. It is mild enough to be eaten raw. Sauteed gently, as in this recipe, it is juicy, plump and delicious.

Halloumi is a salty, mild-tasting, ewes'-milk cheese from the Middle East. It has a very special quality; it holds its shape and does not melt in cooking, instead turning crisply golden outside and tender inside. The Lebanese call it the kebab cheese, and it's excellent on a skewer over a barbecue.

For a cooked herb, halloumi and green garlic salad to serve three as a main course, you'll need:

1 bulb green (fresh) garlic, separated into cloves
6 shallots, finely diced
2 packs halloumi, sliced
1 handful each chives, coriander and tarragon
Juice of 1 lemon
1 large, sweet red chili
1 knob butter

Melt the butter in a thick pan, and gently fry the whole cloves of garlic (green parts still attached) and the shallots for about ten minutes until golden. Slide the halloumi into the pan and fry on one side for five minutes until golden. Add the chili, cut into strips, turn the cheese over and wait until the second side is golden too.

Layer half the cheese, shallots, garlic and chilis in a large mixing bowl, then sprinkle herbs on top. Arrange the rest of the halloumi and the pan juices over the herbs. Squeeze the juice of a lemon all over the salad and serve with crusty bread and some sliced tomatoes.

Cold remedies

Mae Gabriel from Rice and Noodles asked me to join in another tagging exercise, this time on homebrew cold remedies. I'm delighted she asked; I very seldom get colds. This is not because I have a killer immune system. It's because I have a kitchen cupboard full of magic.

My first move on feeling a bit numb around the soft palate is to down a glass of water with twenty drops of echinacea tincture in it. I did read the studies last year suggesting that it doesn't work, but the office cold tends to pass me by every winter, so clearly something I'm doing is killing the bugs. I'm not going to stop glugging echinacea just yet.

Mr Weasel's Granny used to make a cough syrup at home which became known as Granny's Marvelous Mixture. I rang Mrs Weasel Senior to find out what went into it. You'll need:

Granny's Marvelous Mixture
1 tablespoon golden syrup
1 knob (just under an ounce) butter
1 teaspoon vinegar

Melt the golden syrup and butter together. (Mrs Weasel Senior uses a bain marie over hot water; I put them in the microwave for thirty seconds.) Stir the mixture well and add the vinegar, then taste the syrup. The vinegar should catch the back of your throat while the buttery syrup soothes it. Add a little more vinegar if you feel you need it. I used cider vinegar; Mr Weasel's family always used malt vinegar. Whichever way you do it, it's surprisingly tasty. Mr Weasel and his sister used to run around after all the snotty, snivelling kids at school trying to catch colds so they could get someone to make them some Marvelous Mixture. He's currently sitting on the sofa dipping a spoon into it, licking it and making happy noises.

Honey made by bees which have collected nectar from the Manuka bush in New Zealand is supposed to possess remarkable antibacterial properties. It has a smoky, dark, slightly bitter caramel taste, markedly different from other honeys. Those who are regulars at the local florist will notice that the picture on the front of your pot looks a lot like Waxflower, which is used as foliage with a tiny, pretty pink and white flower in arrangements. The foliage has a beautiful, lemony scent. Clare from Eatstuff tells me that the two are related; both are members of the myrtacea family. (I had originally thought they were the same plant. This is what comes of living on the opposite side of the planet from the nearest specimen of the real thing.)

Manuka honey makes a really delicious cold remedy when mixed with the juice from limes and hot water. Limes are packed to the fruity gills with vitamin C. There's always a bowl of limes in our house; they're excellent in a gin and tonic, and while there is potential that I may have a slightly swollen liver, I certainly don't have scurvy. Add one and a half tablespoons of the honey to the juice of two limes, and top them up in a mug with hot water from the kettle. The curious kitten is optional.

Sickrooms, like kitchens, can get stinky. In our poorly ventilated kitchen, I use Armenian burning papers, traditionally burned to kill germs, to get rid of the pongs produced in cooking. They're magic - these scent-impregnated strips of paper have been produced to the same method for 500 years now, and remove smells magically. They're proof against raw onions, blachan (fermented shrimp) and all kinds of seafood. Armenian burning papers are available at Aedes de Venustas in America, and at Nature et Decouvertes in Europe. (Nature et Decouvertes is a hell of a lot cheaper.)

To use the papers, remove a strip and fold it accordeon style. Light one end with a match. The flame will die down immediately, and the paper will smoulder away to ash over about five minutes, releasing its powdery, incense-heavy smoke. It was believed that this deodorising smoke killed the foul-smelling miasma responsible for influenza, and removed dangerous damp from the air. It doesn't do either of these things (thank heavens for microbiology), but it does smell great, and it does a fantastic job of removing bad smells.

If your cold is still hanging around after all that, you've one last remedy to turn to: our friend garlic. Garlic has powerful antimicrobial and antifungal properties, and after you've chewed on a raw clove nobody will want to come close enough to give you a cold. Bruise a clove and steep it in a shot of vodka for a few hours. If you're not feeling brave, stir in a spoonful of Manuka honey before chugging it.

I'm meant to tag five people with this one. What do you do when you have a cold? This time, they're not all food bloggers - I think some of my perfume blogging friends might have something to add here too. Cait from Legerdenez and Great She Elephant: you're it. Food bloggers who can expect an email shortly are Kalyn at Kalyn's Kitchen, The Winemaker's Wife and Santos from The Scent of Green Bananas. Have fun everyone, and don't forget to use a handkerchief.