Wild Garlic Flowers as a Garnish - Recipe Ideas

If you hate micro herbs and everything they stand for as much as I do then you're in luck! Not only are they pretentious, bland and dare I say it... completely pointless, but they cost a bomb and compared to wild alternatives that look just as pretty and are completely FREE, there is no competition! 

So I'm going to give you some ideas for your next dinner party because as much as I believe that food is about the taste and not necessarily the look of it, well presented food has it's time and place.

Celeriac and apple soup with fried sage, crumbled feta and wild garlic flowers (pictured above) 

Exactly what it says on the tin, this soup is all about the garnish. Try and balance the celeriac and apple flavours (otherwise it can end up tasting like a desert), add fried onion and celery base with  an earthy thyme along with creme fraiche or cream to the soup before blitzing to enhance the celeriac flavour with celery and add and earthier flavour with the thyme. Shallow fry the sage leaves for a bit of crunch and burst of flavour that compliments the feta beautifully. You can either add an entire head of wild garlic flowers or separate them and sprinkle the individual heads over your soup.

Boiled baby new potatoes with wild garlic, sorrel and wild fennel with wild garlic flowers

Wilt the chopped wild garlic and sorrel in a pan with butter or oil (or both) and then toss your potatoes in it with seasoning. Add the fennel sprigs and wild garlic flowers at the last minute (you don't want these to wilt). 

Salads 

Wild flowers will always add a certain edge to your salad bowl- try wild garlic, chive flowers, nasturtiums, and even daisies or dandelions. 

Delicate leaves to use to replace your 'microherbs' are purslane, hairy bittercress, small navelwort leaves, samphire (marsh or rock) and chickweed.  

Canapes 

Now this is a little broad, but ideas such as finishing a salmon mousse canape with a small sprig of wild fennel, perhaps a beef or venison and horseradish canape with a miniature navelwort leaf or hairy bittercress sprig. The key here is to try the wild edibles and match the flavour to the dish. The better the garnish compliments the dish, the less pointless it is (do I sound like a cynic yet?!) 

Drinks

On to the fun stuff! Nothing beats a homemade ice tea or a gin cocktail infused with rosemary and garnished with fruit, but you can use wild herbs to do just this. 

Rose Ice tea garnished with edible rose petals, lavender lemonade garnished with violets, prosecco garnished with elderflowers.

Again, be creative and try to match colours and flavours e.g. you don't want to be putting nasturtiums in a sweet drink as they have a peppery taste. You don't want to overpower the taste of the drink either with it's garnish, so keep that in mind too.