Every spring spotless streams are filled with watercress and the watersides are flourishing with wild garlic, it's all free, no point in paying for them when you can get them fresh everyday down at your local stream or burn. Now I know its a little early but you can just start to see that spring is coming. When I was a child, watercress was one of the first things i discovered as a wild food when playing about in a small burn that came fresh out of the hills up the back of Largs in Ayrshire. This wee burn was so clean that you could drink the water straight from the ground, watercress was everywhere and that's a clear sign of outstanding water supply and with the wild garlic flourishing all over the place, it was amazing. We used to get our eggs from the farm across the road from my nans house as well as slurry for growing the veggies in the garden.
Just writing this makes me want to be a little kid again, life was great. Anyway, on to the recipe before we end up spending too much time going down memory lane.
Watercress & garlic velouté:
1 sliced white onion
50g butter
3 cloves garlic
Pinch salt
2 chopped potatos
1 chopped leek
100g watercress
5g wild garlic leaves
500ml vegitable stock/nage
Firstly sweat the onion & garlic in a little oil and the butter. Add the salt, leek and potato and cook down for 5 minutes. Add the stock, bring to the boil and let it simmer for 15 minutes. Add the watercress & wild garlic and blend. Pass the soup with a sieve and place into a tub, place the tub into a sink with ice & water to cool it down and retain the vibrant green colour. Chill and use when required. For the garnish, i've poached an organic hens egg. Don't waste your time with everyday eggs, go and find yourself a little farm, veg shop or butchers that sell local produce that you know is grown organically as you'll get a flavour that is ten fold compaired to bog standard eggs. Also to garnish, i've made a little garlic oil, picked some garlic flowers and cooked & crumbled some world class stornaway black pudding. It was the only option in my eyes when using black pudding, i could make my own but lets face facts because i'm don't have the skills to make a black pudding as good as Stornaway. When heating the soup back up, add a little stock and foam with a stick blender to produce that velvet texture thus producing a Velouté and not your average soup.
It may be a few weeks before the wild garlic is everywhere but hopefully with this little teaser, you'll be ready to go as soon as its here.
Enjoy!
