Wild Garlic, Gooseberries and Me: A chef’s stories and recipes from the land

Asparagus certainly played no part in the Ireland in which I grew up. Years later, it was rumoured to be occasionally available in the finest restaurants. Or, you might come across it on your holidays in France. (If, that is, you were the sort to take holidays anywhere other than the nearest beach.) There may have followed a short time when Spanish asparagus appeared in good greengrocers (remember them?) for a short season and at a high price.

If there were such a time, it was brief and quickly shoved aside by the scenario of mediocre asparagus on the shelves all year round. Usually European in origin for the traditional six- or eight-week season of May to June, for the rest of the year it is imported from Peru. So, before we even had a chance to divide ourselves into those who could afford or appreciate asparagus and those who couldn’t or wouldn’t, the beautiful vegetable has been reduced to a bog-standard ubiquitous imitator. Think about this: has anyone ever gushed excitedly to you on a cold winter’s morning about the amazing asparagus they had for dinner the night before, and which they bought cheaply at Tesco? Not likely.

One of the finest qualities of asparagus as a crop is the way it resolutely sticks to its seasonal pattern. By the same token, one of the worst qualities of the people purchasing for supermarkets is their myopic belief that you, the punter, will only be interested in a vegetable if it is in the same place on the same shelf every day of the year. And going cheap. When almost all vegetables have been manipulated, teased and tricked into lengthening their productive seasons, the few that have remained unbendable hold a special place in the hearts of those who enjoy the pleasure of taking part in a feast that passes by briefly, and only once a year. And I think that, deep down or otherwise, that’s most of us.

If it is true that there is a rebirth in the art of growing food, there may yet be another heyday for asparagus, and a better one. The smartest gardeners will take the trouble to make an asparagus bed a part of their future. When this happens, it should go a long way to helping us to see asparagus as the outrageously bountiful vegetable it is when in season. Whether you grow your own or have access to a decent crop in late spring, do try to feast on it at least a couple of times while it is around. I mean really feast on it – cook a couple of kilos and call it dinner, served with some melted butter and a few new spuds if you need the carbs.

In recipes for asparagus, you will often find references to thin and fat spears, and many food writers seem to favour thin ones. I don’t really get this, unless you are after a very delicate flavour. I rarely am. A good spear of asparagus should have the thickness of your little finger, at least, and is often better if it is the size of the next one along. At this size, the flesh inside has a juicy, nutty sweetness that is balanced by the texture of the skin and its green, almost grassy, flavour. Thin asparagus spears, however, can be fantastic in salads or strewn over softly cooked eggs, especially if the asparagus is raw or merely introduced to boiling water for a few seconds. A simple way of approaching this is to think about the proportion of skin to flesh. The thin skin of asparagus coats the sweetly succulent flesh with a mildly astringent, truly green flavour. At a certain point, there is a perfect balance, and it’s not at the skinny end of the scale.

There is, too, disagreement about peeling the stalks. Here again, I go for the simple life, and rarely peel at all. Simply snap the spear just above the point where it changes colour. However, if the spears are very fat or it is obvious that the skin is tough, then peeling is the only solution. And it is worth it, because the flesh inside is usually still tender and juicy. Never say never.

There are two basic ways to prepare asparagus, three if you count eating it raw. And, definitely, very fresh asparagus is fantastic raw, either as an indulgent snack coming back up the garden path, as finger food with a dip, or thinly sliced in salads. Once indoors, asparagus can be boiled, steamed, fried, roasted or grilled. Boiling or steaming leaves the flavour pure and fine, and this is best if the asparagus is to be used in cooked dishes like tarts, gratins, pasta, risottos or pancakes. I like asparagus lightly cooked and still crunchy, so I would cook it for no more than three minutes. That’s a subjective matter, though, and you have to find your own way. Always serve it immediately, or plunge it into cold water to cool it down if you are adding it to a dish later.

If you are serving the asparagus on its own or with a dip, perhaps as a starter, then you can get a more intense flavour by grilling or roasting it. Lay the spears on a flat oven tray, sprinkle them very lightly with olive oil and salt flakes, and roast in a hot oven for four or five minutes. Cooking them under a grill, on a griddle pan, or on a barbecue, works too, but I think the oven gives a juicier result. Done either way, the asparagus will be crunchy, slightly browned and somehow more intense and sweeter than when boiled. You can’t leave it hanging around at this stage, nor can you cool it in water, so be sure that everything, and everybody, is ready before you put asparagus in the oven or under a grill.

When asparagus takes a partner, it really marries well. Classically, asparagus has an affinity with new potatoes, butter, lemon, chives, tarragon and with eggs of all kinds cooked any way. Asparagus is comfortable with a surprisingly wide range of cheeses, but has a special affinity with hard mature cheeses with some sweetness or the mellow sharpness of fresh goat’s or sheep’s cheeses.

Asparagus also loves a hint of rosemary or lemon thyme in an olive oil-based aïoli for dunking. In a twist on this, we sometimes replace the herbs in the aïoli with blood orange juice. It makes a striking starter that will make you appear to be very clever and modern. Be careful whom you try to impress, however, as quite a lot of people already know that this is not a new trick at all, but a classic combination from Malta. We found the inspiration for this version in Jane Grigson’s Fruit Book while looking for interesting things to do with blood oranges. The combination of orange and asparagus also works beautifully in a salad.

Seakale, a prince from the shoreline

Asparagus will remain at the top of the aristocratic pile for a while yet, but if there is a vegetable with the potential to match it for unique flavour and appearance, it is surely seakale.

Seakale has a dual personality of extreme characteristics. It is at once ancient and modern, both highly cultivated and utterly wild. It was eaten as a prized wild seashore plant around the coasts of much of Europe long before it was cultivated, and it has persisted as a favourite wild food still, for those lucky enough to know where to find it and who still appreciate its rugged qualities. And yet, it has for centuries also been grown as an exquisite garden vegetable. This transformation from rugged and wild to delicate and cultivated is achieved by the gardening practice known as blanching, whereby the young shoots of a plant are covered to keep the sunlight away. The stalks grow long and thin, with little foliage, and, most importantly, with a subtly delicious flavour and tender texture.

Perhaps in the renaissance of domestic vegetable growing, seakale will become once again, along with asparagus, one of the prized jewels of those who love to eat as much as they love to grow. However, I would urge anyone growing seakale to leave some of the plants uncovered, to be enjoyed as one of the most intense and succulent winter greens. This dual role is why seakale is the only individual variety of vegetable to feature twice in this book, both here and in the chapter ‘Growing in the dark’, where I look at the blanched version in more detail. If I had found any in the wild, it would have been featured in the ‘Wild pickings’ chapter too, but it has become very scarce in Ireland.

Although I did some research for this book (those who know more than me will have noticed, and I look forward to some witty letters), I tried not to do so much that it would discolour my approach to the vegetables I love. To be honest, after a while I had only a small handful of trustworthy books close by when I felt in need of facts. I’m a lazy reader, but still I began to see patterns of repetition in reference books, patterns that made me nervous.

The myth about seakale, repeated in so many books that it has practically become fact, is that it is ‘bitter and inedible’ as a green vegetable. This may be because it is so sublimely unique when blanched – an understandable extension of thought, if you like, but the myth is actually untrue. It is a myth that must have been promulgated by those who have never eaten unblanched seakale. Surely if you are going to say that something that grows easily in your climate is bitter and inedible, you should take a bite of it first?

Of course, it is necessary to accept the validity of expert sources when writing history or science, and there is a lot of both in gardening and food reference books. So there is bound to be repetition. But as little as I know about gardening, I came to realise very quickly the importance of trying to get to original sources of information. In that context, Joy Larkcom’s books, especially Grow Your Own Vegetables and Oriental Vegetables, are so idiosyncratic you just know that there is nothing in there that she hasn’t tested in her own field. Literally. Joy never wrote of seakale, but knowing her love of greens, you can be sure she would not have been able to resist testing it in the end.

I might well have gone on to propagate this notion too if I hadn’t had a call from Ultan, way too early one damp Monday morning in March. He had been diligently leaving the first year’s crop of seakale to grow out, unblanched. All the books tell you to do this simply to strengthen the crowns below ground, and so he did…sort of. Being a fiend for good greens, he kept looking at them, thinking they must be edible. In my interpretation of the scene, I imagine him drooling a little, maybe even a lot. Anyway, the night before (a wet, boring Sunday) he ate the damn things. No, not all of them, but enough to know the truth. Again, I imagine there was drooling, maybe even slobbering. I would have known about it immediately, except that I was out at a ‘fine’ restaurant eating crap food. Ah, the glorious joys of urban life.

The next day I collected some green seakale and cooked it for the first time. I admit I was a little nervous, especially of feeding it to my fifteen-year-old son. He’s a willing guinea pig, though I wouldn’t go so far as to say he trusts me completely. I even warned him that the literature describes this stuff as inedible in its green state.

In fact, there was no more than a trace of the bitterness that is written of in those dozens of books. All good greens have some bitterness, so if anything, the taste was a little milder than many of my favourite greens, such as sprouting broccoli or black kale. Seakale has the essential vibrant colour, and a softly melting but chewy texture. Sprouting broccoli is a good reference point for seakale. Pick it young, when the stems, the soft leaves and the budding flower heads are all edible. Discard the tough leaves and cook the rest in an open pan with a little water, just enough to keep it moist. When it is tender, dress it with olive oil, salt and pepper. Don’t leave any juices behind in the pan when you serve. Until you become bored with that, nothing more is called for. And yes, the fifteen-year-old liked it.

Next year we will have both green and blanched seakale. How cool is that?

Watering the cats and putting manners on the plants: the rainbow chard diaries

I spent ten days in late spring minding the house of friends who had gone off to France in a camper van that I didn’t expect to make it off the ferry. Oh well, to each their own sense of adventure. Mine was to live alone for ten days in their lovely old farmhouse with an acre or so of garden near the coast in West Cork. ‘Garden’ might be a bit of an understatement. It is more an exquisite arrangement of plants, the edible and the purely aesthetic, blended together in deliberate patterns but not fussily pristine. Parts of it are handsomely geometric, but look as though it might have happened by happy chaos, that it is simply the inherent beauty of nature that has caused it to fall together so perfectly. I know how much work goes into achieving that look. I say that as someone who fusses over plates and the appearance of food, and who likes the result to look as if it fell on to the plate in a pleasing but slightly off-centre sort of way.

Up at the very top of the garden, in the pink and purple area (yes, indeed) was a chard plant almost 1.8 metres (6 feet) tall, flanked by two purple-tinted kales, slightly shorter. All three were the previous season’s crop, which were allowed to carry on growing for their statuesque beauty and fabulous colours. In fact, the stem and leaf stalks of the chard were close to a screaming shade of red, with just enough hint of pink to qualify for the theme of the area. (This is one of chard’s great qualities as a garden vegetable. It is very beautiful, especially if you grow varieties with different-coloured stalks.) Elsewhere in the garden there was a patch of the more sedate but classic white-stemmed chard, and in another corner still a scattering of what is known as a ‘rainbow mix’, with yellow, orange, white and pink chards mingling vividly. And all this beauty provides such good, and easy, food.

I was in the house for the peaceful environment and to find the time that I had been wilfully wasting in the city, for writing and reading. But this was to be a mutually beneficial arrangement, so I had chores as well. Two duties mainly: the cats and the garden. The cats were easy. I moved them out of the house, lecturing them on the potential joys of getting in touch with their inner tiger. The catflap, their portal between wild nature and indoor pampering, was temporarily sealed. Not wanting to be totally heartless, I gave them access to a tiny hallway where there would be mats to sleep on, and food to eat, albeit smaller rations than they were used to. Well, I reckoned, quickly getting up to speed on cat evolution, a fat lazy cat has no chance of finding that tiger. She needs some hunger motivation. Some great wise (and probably very rich) old man is bound to have said that.

The garden was another matter. I don’t garden. I admire and love those who do, and I know a lot of the theory, but I’ve never really got my hands dirty in one. Not the best person to leave in charge, then. I can do chores, if they are clearly laid out. So I did what I do in the restaurant kitchen – made a checklist for every day, with space to tick off jobs as they were completed: watering, ventilating the greenhouse, moving plants here and there for light and shade, covering and uncovering new plantings depending on weather, recording temperature and rainfall levels. (Golden rule: never go to bed with an unfinished checklist.) Yes, that’s right: I was Met Man for West Cork briefly.

The first night, it lashed down, heavy rain falling in bucketfuls. The wind whipped around the house and every door latch twitched noisily all night. In my few fitful snatches of sleep, I imagined it was the cats coming for me, all tigered up. In my more frequent wide-awake state, I felt a tiny bit sorry for them. Next morning, there was more water in the rain collection jar than had fallen in the entire previous month. The cats were alive and dry, if a little sorry for themselves. I took a ramble round the garden, trying to be masterly but not really knowing what I was looking for. I mean, in the city I would have been looking for roof tiles and broken downpipes, maybe glass everywhere. So, to my untrained eye, it all looked fine, a bit windswept maybe, but fine, until I came to the chard. One entire plant had fallen over. It wasn’t broken, more like it had stood up to the wind and rain for a long time, then gradually tilted sideways until it lay flat on the ground, dejectedly unable to fight any more, yet relieved that the battle was over. It reminded me of seeing Spencer Tracy in The Old Man and the Sea, putting a gloomy downer on one Christmas holiday afternoon in my youth. Watching the film, you cheer him on for an hour or so, but then, seeing that he is dying a slow death, you just want it over and done with. I did the only thing a self-respecting cook could do – snipped off a handful of leaves for lunch (just a simple dish of wilted chard flavoured with lemon and pine nuts). Two days later when the plant had made no recovery, I took the best of the rest and made a very tasty gratin.

Chard grows willingly and can be harvested by taking a few leaves at a time. It will kindly go on producing more. It has never made much of an impact as a commercial crop, except in farmers’ markets to a small extent. This is not necessarily a bad thing. It really does need to be used very fresh. This is true of the softer greens in general, but especially of chard because the stalks start to become tough and stringy in a day or so after picking, and the leaves lose their sweetness. It’s worth mentioning too that while the coloured chards will add to the beauty of your garden, their stalks are thinner and tougher than the white variety. I rarely cook the coloured stalks at all.

Spinach is a good starting reference point for what to do with chard, though the leaves are coarser and hold their texture and substance better than spinach. This makes chard leaves really good in tarts, frittata, stews, soups and pancakes, and as a wrapping for ‘parcels’ like dolmas and timbales. The flavour also has a stronger, earthier element than spinach.

Chard stalks are a vegetable in their own right, and it is worth thinking of them as such once the stalk is about 3cm (1 1/4 in) wide below the leaf. If the stalks seem stringy, it is possible to peel away the thin layer of stringy film. At that size and beyond, I like to trim the leaves off and braise the stalks by slicing them across 2cm (3/4 in) thick, then putting them in a heavy pan with olive oil, white wine and stock to barely cover, and cooking over a low heat with the lid on until the stalks are soft and succulent. In soups or stews, the stalks don’t need to be cooked separately, of course, but just added earlier than the leaves.

Chard, whether using leaves, stalks or both, is wonderful with eggs, tomatoes, earthy Puy lentils, olive oil and spices, and with almost all cheeses from strong blues to feta, and from hard, aged cheeses to soft fresh ones. It is also great in any variation of hearty Italian soups and stews, rich as they are with olive oil and herbs, and often laced with lemon juice.

Back at the farmhouse, there was one other chore, which I never managed to tick off. (So much for the golden rule of the checklist.) I was to kill snails and slugs at dusk, the scissors method being optional. I tried it the first evening, bolstered by a few glasses of wine. But I managed to fool myself that I couldn’t find more than a half dozen of the enemy, that the problem was exaggerated, and I admit to simply chucking those few over the fence. I went on fooling myself on that one for the rest of the tour of duty. At least I was honest enough not to tick the checklist.

Popeye’s fighting fuel – spinach or whiskey?

While we were diligently eating our cabbage here in Ireland, children in other parts of the world, particularly America, were shovelling back the spinach. Nutritionally, its strongest card is iron, which it has in spades, if you’ll excuse the pun, and is surely what that crazy fiend Popeye was supposedly benefiting from when he glugged down those cans. Was that guy invented by a committee of lunatic nutritionists? I know it must have seemed like a good idea to have a cartoon character that encouraged kids to gobble up their greens, but couldn’t they have come up with a role model with rather more admirable characteristics? Popeye was a rough sailor, not the brightest fish in the sea either, with a shockingly poor grasp of grammar and vocabulary. OK, he loved his girlfriend, and that’s a sweet message, but I can’t help thinking she might have been better off with someone else. Whenever there was a problem, and sometimes when he merely imagined there was one, he lashed back a couple of cans of spinach and came out, fists blazing, walloping people clear out of the scene with ferocious violence. Whiskey would have had the same effect. (In fact, he surely must have been drinking off screen, in one of those seedy waterfront dives populated by cartoon lowlife.)

As it turned out, the information that fuelled not only Popeye but also the enormous canned spinach industry was erroneous. Big time. When the US research of the 1890s was retested by German scientists in the 1930s, it was found that the original results had put a decimal point in the wrong place, multiplying the potential benefits of spinach tenfold. Just in time to start a huge industry. Oh, dear. You wouldn’t want to be cynical, would you? If only Popeye’s foes were aware that he was fuelling himself on a fallacy.

Spinach is still a highly nutritious vegetable, even so, and it does have a decent amount of iron. But even if it wasn’t so healthy, we would still eat it for its flavour and all-round usefulness. Spinach is, in many ways, the ultimate green. Granted, in the company of some of the other greens here, it may not seem a big hitter, having neither the complex flavour nor the strong texture of the likes of sprouting broccoli and black or Chinese kale. But that is not what spinach is about. It has a mild flavour and a soft texture, which makes it easily the most useful, multi-functional green. Available all year round now, spinach is almost always on the menu in Paradiso, often in more than one dish. There is always spinach, the other greens come and go.

Spinach is also the benchmark of leaf greens, the one that the others are judged by. Is this or that kale softer or tougher than spinach? Sweeter or more bitter? Longer to cook? Easier to grow? Can it step into classic recipes that call for spinach or is it too strong, bitter or tough?

Recipes for spinach? There are thousands. For hundreds, and in some cases thousands, of years, it has been served in tarts both sweet and savoury, curries, soups, inside ravioli, as a component of pasta dishes and even as a colouring for the pasta itself; in gnocchi and other dumplings, omelettes and endless egg dishes, pancakes, salads, and much more besides. Not forgetting that it is also wonderful served on its own, whether in the English style with butter, or with olive oil, as the Italians prefer.

There are many varieties of spinach, but it’s best to think of them as two types. The soft ‘true’ spinach, as it is sometimes called, can be used raw in salads, especially with the likes of soft cheeses or hard sweet ones, fennel, oranges and oily nuts such as walnuts or pine nuts. It can certainly also be cooked, and has a meltingly soft texture and beautifully dark, glossy colour. However, you have to be very careful, as it cooks very quickly and reduces to less than a tenth of its volume. The other type is generally known as ‘perpetual’ spinach. It has much larger, thicker leaves of a lighter shade. For general cooking, I prefer to use this one. The flavour is less exquisite, but it carries, and stands up to, other flavours very well. It also loses much less volume when cooked. Oh, it shrinks all right, but not so much that it breaks your heart and sends you scurrying to the shops for more.

There is one variety that needs to be looked at in its own right, however. It goes by the name of‘New Zealand spinach’ or ‘tetragonia’. Although I have spent a bit of time in New Zealand, I have no memory of this vegetable there. However, it is documented that the great (or terrible, according to your perspective) Captain Cook brought it back from his first voyage down under. Or perhaps I should say it came back on his ship. I don’t know if Cook was that interested in plants, but he was lucky enough to have someone on board who was – a certain Joseph Banks, a botanist with an appetite for exploration.

Back on this side of the world, however, despite its flavour and suitability to the climate, New Zealand spinach is still very rare, and little used as a vegetable. Unlike other spinach varieties, this one can tolerate dry, and even hot, conditions. This has sometimes been mistakenly believed to be because it doesn’t go to seed as easily as the others do when stressed. The truth is that the plant is forever going to seed, hence those beautifully sweet buds that add greatly to its flavour and texture. New Zealand spinach grows well in a tunnel or glasshouse in spring and autumn, and has proven to be perfectly happy outdoors during our warm but often damp summers. In fact, the only conditions it really doesn’t like is a combination of very hot and very wet. Should be safe as houses in Ireland, then. We can do wet with gusto, but hot is rare enough to be a tale for the grandkids. Both together would mean the whole island had slid down to the equator.

There are, I think, a couple of reasons for the lack of success of this spinach variety. New Zealand spinach grows as a creeping plant and covers the ground in a fiercely territorial way. The tips of the shoots, with the top few leaves and the tiny bud attached, are the best parts to pick and cook, though the lower leaves are excellent too. Because of the way it grows and the way it is harvested, it is never going to be well enough behaved to be of any use to supermarkets. And so it remains a defiantly domestic vegetable or, at a stretch, one grown by dedicated professionals for specific customers. I always admire that in a vegetable – one that is clearly great homegrown but can’t be tamed for the convenience market. When people ask in the restaurant where they can find this gem of a green, it is great to be able to say that the best thing is to grow your own.

The second drawback is that there comes a time when the sweet little buds become too coarse and tough. The leaves are still good at this point, but the work involved in preparing the vegetable, picking off the buds, is almost doubled. I’ve tried asking Ultan to do it, but only by leaving a phone message as I didn’t really want to hear his reply. It is no problem doing this at home for a small number, but in a restaurant kitchen, preparing for multiple meals, the cooks quickly grow to despise the chore. When it comes to that, it’s time to give up on the troublesome vegetable. A grumpy kitchen is no fun, and not much good at the sensitive job of cooking dinner either.

So why persevere with New Zealand spinach, then? Although it is very close in character to standard spinach, and it can be used in any recipe that calls for the latter, it has two important advantages. Texture and flavour. Yes, those two! The matter of flavour is subjective, of course, and I may well be taken to task for saying it, but New Zealand spinach is somehow richer and greener than other spinach varieties, yet still sweet and without any of the bitterness of the coarser greens. It really stands alone in terms of texture. The shoot tips, with a tiny bud and some leaves attached to a thin stalk, hold their shape beautifully when cooked, as indeed do the other individual leaves. This is a wonderful asset to a restaurant kitchen, where the aesthetics of food is always high on the agenda. A good-looking vegetable that doesn’t sacrifice flavour is a restaurateur’s dream.

Taking to the watercress: the holy herb

Watercress has been gathered from the wild for thousands of years, providing a source of essential vitamins and iron long before these qualities were isolated and recognised. Watercress is one of those foods that are so overtly good for you that it really doesn’t take a scientist to explain it. You can see it in the vibrant green colour and taste it in the punchy flavour: this is a loaded vegetable.

It has traditionally been picked from flowing streams and ditches and can be found all year round, except that it doesn’t really like extremes of temperature and often disappears temporarily during the coldest part of winter and the hottest summer months.

Because the plant will absorb any water-borne pollutants, especially agricultural slurry washing off nearby fields, I am not advocating the consumption of wild watercress. Liver fluke is a particular worry as it seems to thrive in watercress, and can pass to humans. While the idyllic image of collecting wild cress is attractive, it is essential that you really know the source and are certain that the water in which the cress grows is free from any pollution. For most of us, that means it is simply not a good idea to eat watercress from the wild. Similarly, if you are buying watercress from a market stall, do make sure you can trust the source.

Most watercress is now commercially grown in carefully controlled flowing water beds, an industry that already goes back over two hundred years. The watercress we use in Paradiso comes from a source that is somewhere between the wild and controlled. It is grown in a deep pond in the bend of a stream on a small vegetable farm in West Cork. The pond was created in the late 1970s by a number of very enlightened blow-ins who began their lives here as self-sufficiency advocates, moved on to trading and bartering amongst themselves, and eventually took the bold step of selling excess produce to the public. Fatefully, they formed a co-op. From there it was the usual slide towards outbreaks of feuding, accusations of capitalism, fascism and plain old fraud. The good ones are still round and about, still growing and sometimes selling great food. Luckily the stream and the cress survived not only the fall-out, but numerous changes of ownership of the property that the stream flows through. Each time the farm changes hands, I fear for the future of our watercress supply.

Somehow it’s not surprising that research is well advanced on the attributes of watercress that are believed to be cancer inhibitors. This is a very modern take on a plant that has been seen as a miracle for as long as humans have been eating it. Way back as far as Greek and Roman times, and continuously through the centuries since, watercress has been revered for qualities beyond its simple nutritional content. At various times it has been credited with the powers of everything from curing freckles and hangovers to reversing baldness and restoring lost beauty; and it has been extolled as, among many other things, an aphrodisiac and an intellectual stimulant.