Wild Garlic and Potato Soup

Wild Garlic Potato soup is made with only a few ingredients.  Its simplicity
creates a distinctive, subtle flavour

Saturday morning in mid May woke up somewhat confused; after a beautiful week of warmth and sunshine that easily could have been masquerading as almost summery June days, Saturday woke up crummy, cold and wet an almost early April day.  It was the kind of day that called for Saturday morning papers, tea and sweet things to begin and a long day curled up, warm and inside.  But it wasn’t to be.  Off in the cool rain to work for seven hours in the kitchen and to come home to menus demanding to be finished, students papers to grade and finally to the Boston-Tampa game to forget it all.  That was the plan…….but the best laid plans.

As I said, it certainly wasn’t a day fit for man nor beast to be walking around in the eastern Ontario woodlands and fields.  Anyhow, not for most people.  For wild edible foragers are of another kind.  Late in the day, running from bike to store collecting the last of Saturday night’s dinner, I received a call from Ivan.  He and his son had been out all day foraging wild garlic.  They had 10 pounds fresh picked, did I want it. 

One doesn’t say no when Ivan calls with wild garlic – or especially if he calls with morels in baskets – and any hope of growing roots into the sofa in front of the television and sitting through three periods of mayhem went out the window. 

Every spring for the last maybe 15 years I make at least a pot, or maybe a more, of potato-wild garlic soup.  Wild garlic is sometimes called stink weed and having a canvas bag of 10 pounds of it in the basement immediately reveals why it has that particular nickname.  But when matched with potatoes all the stink goes out of it.  The transformation is remarkable: cooking over a low heat in butter it slowly releases a sweet subtle aroma.  Wine, potatoes and stock – in can be vegetable or chicken stock – finish the pot. 

The result is a beautiful smooth, creamy soup – with absolutely no cream.  On first tasting it, the immediate flavour is of potato.  But there is an underlying taste, at first just there and after a few spoons, a very definite, but always understated flavour.  That’s the wild garlic.  The sense of wild garlic becomes more prominent if you mince the green leafs or make a gremolatta with leaf, bulb and lemon.  But with my first bowl I prefer the clean and simple flavour of bulbs and potatoes.

Enjoy.

I am presenting this soup un a bowl made by my sister.  I love the way that the red tipped bud of the leaf mimics the line of the bowl.  The spoon is from a collection of 1930's Bakelite cutlery that Jeanette and I purchased about 30 years on a then un-trendy Queen Street

Ramp-Potato Soup

for the soup:

½ cup wild garlic bulbs, minced                           4 Tbsp. butter

1 cup white wine                                                    5 russet potatoes to make about 6-8 cups        

stock to cover                                                         salt and pepper

Sweat the wild garlic in the butter until very aromatic and tender; add the wine, bring to a boil and reduce by half.  Add the potatoes and stock – I cover the potatoes by about an inch of stock, cooking until the potatoes are very tender.  Puree – there’s no need to pass the soup.  Adjust the seasoning.

for the gremolatta:

1 cups wild garlic greens                                       4 Tbsp. wild garlic bulbs

4 Tbsp. lemon zest                                                 ½ cup almonds

Chop everything together.  Great on the soup or used on salads.

My Father's Asparagus-Prosciutto-Pecorino Romano Sandwich

The raw ingredients.  Try the kamut-sourdough baguette from True Loaf in Ottawa.
What ever bread you choose, it should be flavourful itself, crusty and chewy.

Those first few, precious days of warmth that collect in early April have come and gone.  We have sipped back into days that only hint at the spring and summer to come.  To be honest, I’m happy with these almost cold nights and too cool days; I sometimes think that we rush with too much haste from the winter’s ending to summer’s beginning and that transition is lost.   There is with the long spring a greater sense of anticipation of the new season, of the market crops with pale white-green shoots touching just the skin of the earth.

With the first warm days of early April, I imagined local asparagus, thick stocks, dripping with syrup when cut away from the mother plant.  Its imagination only, the asparagus is still wrapped against remnants of winter, huddling, waiting for its season.

But still I can imagine and turn from old winter recipes to the beginnings of the local farm gate.

My father used to get up way before I did and began his day only with a coffee before he began his day of work. He would pick up the deliveries that he would have to make that morning and come home to sort them out and sit for a moment’s breakfast.  I think, coffee and toast, and then on the road.  I don’t ever remember his coming home for lunch or if he ever ate lunch, what he was eating.  Sunday was day on which we would most often sit to share a meal other than dinner.  Sunday morning I was given change to buy crusty hard bread at the local bakery a few blocks away – and later further away bakery that meant a bike ride to a shop on Cannon Street half way to my grandparents.  A long way for a little kid to go. 

We would have the bread with oil and cheese and my parents would have fresh vegetables like asparagus, which as a child I couldn’t image eating.  I don’t know if he ever ate a sandwich like this – I know he never had this particular one because he didn’t like garlic and wouldn’t have had the garlic bread and I don’t think that we could afford prosciutto in those days.  But this is my take on a sandwich that somehow I think of as my father’s sandwich.  Its simple enough that it doesn’t require a great deal of pre-planning and work; make the basic butter and hold it in the frig – if you can – to use for a snack or to begin a meal.  Its one of my favourite spring sandwiches, the first of the season to use a local crop.  The saltiness of the prosciutto and cheese is sharp against the sweetness of the asparagus and give depth of flavour to the sandwich.

You know what it is, it’s the kind of meal that’s perfect for carrying outside to sit on whatever’s out there, a front or back stoop, a veranda, patio or balcony; its perfect for carrying outside with a glass of wine and to sit, eat and stare at the world going along, calling out with a wave kinda sandwich, enjoy the day kinda sandwich.   That’s what this kinda sandwich this is.

The sandwich draped with spring asparagus, salty with shaved pecorino and prosciutto
Its perfect for taking out of doors; enjoy as the day goes along

My Father's Asparagus-Prosciutto-Pecorino Romano Sandwich

for the only part you have to make ahead

for the garlic butter:

¼ lb. butter at room temperature                          ¼ cup extra virgin olive oil

¼ cup roasted garlic                                               ¼ cup grated romano cheese

Whisk all the ingredients together.

for the sandwich:

5-7 spears of asparagus per sandwich, peeled, blanch, chilled

balsamic vinegar to drizzle on the bread

2-3 slices of prosciutto per sandwich – I prefer the Italian, or if I can get it the artisan from Niagara

shave pecorino

Drizzle the bread with balsamic vinegar; brush the bread with the garlic butter and place in hot oven or under broiler to melt and brown.  Lay the prosciutto on the bread, the asparagus and shave pecorino.

Enjoy on a stoop.