Recipe:
Baked Eggs with Wild Garlic
30g butter
400g wild garlic leaves, washed, coarsely chopped
2 spring onions, thinly sliced
4 tbsp double cream
35g coarsely grated cheddar
4 free-range eggs
Butter for dotting over eggs
Olive oil, grated Parmesan
4 buttered ramekins
• Preheat oven to 180°C.
• Melt the butter in a large frying pan
then add wild garlic and cook until
leaves just begin to wilt. Remove
from heat.
• Add the cream and season well.
• Divide the wild garlic mixture evenly
among the buttered ramekins.
Sprinkle with onions and cheddar.
• Crack an egg into a small dish, then
tip into the ramekin. Repeat with
remaining eggs. Dot with butter.
Picture by Simon Avery
Bruce Theobald
• Place ramekins in roasting pan.
Fill pan with boiling water so
that water comes halfway up the
ramekins.
• Bake in the oven for 10-12 minutes
or until the egg is just set.
• Remove from oven, drizzle with
olive oil and sprinkle with grated
parmesan. Serve with hot buttered
toast. This recipe works well with
spinach too.
Seaview Hotel Head Chef
Young, wild & free
W
ild garlic, Allium ursinum, is one of
nature’s earliest and most flavourful
spring foods. It’s found in abundance in damp
woodlands, often carpeting the entire floor.
The season runs from April to June but the
leaves are at their best at the beginning before
the plant produces white flowers. Wild garlic
is easy to identify (broad pointy leaves, smell,
flowers) making it a perfect plant for foraging.
There’s a similarity with the poisonous lily-ofthe-valley, however just a rub of the wild garlic
leaves gives off that distinctive garlicky scent.
Packed full of goodness and proven to lower
blood pressure, you can substitute it for basil
in pesto and it adds great depth of flavour to
soups, stews, salads and baking. Great places
right now are Cowleaze Wood, Shorwell Shute
and Brading Down.
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