Wild Garlic Soup

There are three weeks in late March and April when the woods smell of garlic before you see a single leaf. You notice it on a walk, that low, green, peppery scent rising from the damp ground, and then you look down and they're everywhere. Broad, glossy leaves covering the woodland floor like a carpet someone laid overnight. This is the window. It doesn't stay open long.

I pick a carrier bag's worth every spring from the same patch at the edge of a lane near the house. The leaves are best before the flowers come: younger, softer, with a garlic flavour that's gentle rather than aggressive. Once the white flowers appear, the leaves coarsen and the season is effectively over. You have to pay attention. The market decides, and in this case, the hedgerow decides too.

The soup is simple. Potato for body, onion for sweetness, stock to carry it, and then the wild garlic goes in off the heat at the very end so the colour stays vivid and the flavour stays bright. It takes less than an hour from start to bowl. The green you get is extraordinary, the colour of the season itself, and it tastes exactly like the woods smell on that first warm afternoon when you realise spring has quietly arrived without announcing itself.

I wrote it down in the notebook years ago: wild garlic, potatoes, cream, lemon. First proper spring evening. The recipe hasn't changed since. Some things are right the first time.