Wild Garlic, Smoked Bacon and Parsnip Tagliatelle

So with spring coming round super early this year I thought I’d get the year going with a Wild Garlic recipe. Now the floods have subsided you’ll find it sprouting out beside the riverbanks with abundance. The smell of it in the wild to me is always evocative of the end of winter and start of spring, but be sure not to use too much as the smell on the breath is more evocative of someone with stinky garlic breath!

Wild Garlic sprouting after the floods.

This leads me on to one thing that I’d like to touch on before moving on to the recipe. I think it is important in foraging to only pick what you need. When faced with huge swathes of wild garlic in front of you it would be easy to get carried away and just pick carrier bags full of the stuff, most of which will never get used and will eventually just end up stinking your house out! As a rule of thumb I would say replacing 1 clove of garlic with 4 wild garlic leaves is about right.

Archie the foraging dog finds his target.

On to the recipe! I have been cooking this recipe since around 2001 and as far as I can remember it originated from one of Jamie Olivers early cook books. The addition of wild garlic instead of regular garlic adds an extra depth of flavour and I’d recommend wherever possible buying locally smoked bacon from your nearest farm shop or even direct from the smokery. The bacon I used was from the Wealden Smokery so if you are local to Sussex you won’t find better!

Wild Garlic Shoots

Wild Garlic, Bacon and Parsnip tagliatelle

Serves 4

Foraged:

8 Wild Garlic leaves finely chopped

Ingredients and Prep:

Handful of Rosemary, destalked, leaves finely chopped

100g Butter cut into 4 knobs

600g Parsnips, peeled halved and very thinly sliced lengthways

12 Slices of smoked streaky bacon roughly chopped up

200g Grated parmesan

500g dried tagliatelle

Salt and Pepper

Method:

Fry the bacon and rosemary with one of the knobs of butter in the largest frying pan or wok you have. After 3 or 4 minutes add another knob of butter, the wild garlic and parsnips stirring occasionally to ensure nothing burns in the pan. At the same time put the tagliatelle on as instructed on the packet.

Once the pasta is al dente strain it out reserving a little of the cooking water. Add the pasta, parmesan and rest of the butter to the bacon and parsnips and give it a good stir. If it looks like it’s a little stodgy then loosen with a little of the reserved cooking water. Season and Serve!

Wild Garlic, Smoked Bacon and Parsnip Tagliatelle