I love Wild Garlic, not only the taste but the sense of anticipation it brings.

You see, Wild Garlic is the first genuine foraged ingredient we gather in the springtime. It tends to grow in wet, shady conditions under tree cover and fortunately we have a huge area growing in the old limestone workings near our mooring. In fact, the whole Daw End canal was built to access the limestone, which was an essential ingredient in the local iron trade.

This patch of wild garlic is so big and so prolific that I can easily fill a 2kg Occado supermarket bag in about 15 mins, and by selecting a patch on a steep slope I can ease the impact of all that stooping on my back!

As with most chutneys, the preparation is the easy bit. The carrots can be peeled and then shredded in the food processor but the apples do need to be diced by hand, reducing them to little cubes. The root ginger and the chillies are another ingredient which can be blitzed in a small blender and preparing the ingredients for what will be 75 jars takes maybe a couple of hours or so.

Add the cider vinegar and spices and leave to settle overnight.

Then you get to the less pleasant phase - simmering down. This phase is both slow and smelly....

First a litre of water is added to each batch, then the pans are simmered for maybe 30 minutes till the apple chunks are soft. Then add the sugar and stir in well to make sure nothing sticks. Then simmer, and simmer, and simmer. Expect this phase to take between two and three hours as the ingrediends soften down, mix their flavours and the sugar content rises to a Brix of 42 (you need a refractometer to measure sugar content).

Given the timing of the garlic harvest we tend to make this product in our kitchen at home, which in many ways in preferable to the confined space of the boat. The simmering process releases some very strong vinegar odours which we try to combat with closed doors, open windows, extractor fans running and smelly candles lit. Even so the smell seems to seep into the body of the house and we end up with a lingering odour which takes a couple of days to dissapate. The problem is that Wild Garlic and Carrot is a firm favourite so well worth the sacrifice of a bit of a whiff, and we tend to do several batches over successive days to get it over and done with.

But in all this I haven't mentioned the key ingredient - Wild Garlic.

The Wild Garlic will last just one day after picking so you can't hang around. It needs a very thorough wash to rid it of any muck it may have picked up being so close to the ground, and also to remove anything which isnt Wild Garlic. No matter how hard you try when picking, you will always get a few sticks, leaves or bulbs in your harvest, So, plunge the leaves into a deep sink and pick each leaf out individually, removing any stalks which you wont want in the chutney.

Then, about 10 minutes before the chutney is ready, chop the leaves into small bits and add to the pan. Stir in well and watch all those hedgerow flavours flood into the mix, which suddenly changes from carrot orange to a much darker colour.

Pot into sterilised and warmed jars and get those lids on quickly so you get a good seal. 

Because we are using cider vinegar the maturing process is quite quick and the end result can be eaten within 1 month, and if its been potted well it will happily last unopened for 2 years.

Hurray for Wild Garlic and the promise of another foraging season to follow.