Wizard Recipes

‘April is the cruellest month’ wrote TS Eliot, but after a winter that seemed to last forever, the arrival of spring seems anything but mean-spirited now that brighter colours and flavours are breaking through - including wonderful wild garlic.

Cockles are small, edible bivalves. Traditionally sold with winkles and whelks, cockles have been a popular British seaside snack for many years. They were also sold by vendors outside London pubs who, in the absence of scales, used a pint glass as a measure. They’ve been sold by the pint ever since.

Live cockles in their shells are available from some fishmongers. Cooked and shelled cockles can be bought in jars, preserved in brine or vinegar. They can be used in seafood pie or tossed in a salad, eaten raw or steamed until their shells open, like mussels. Use them in soups, risotto and paella or stew them in a tomato sauce for pasta.

• Penclawdd cockle chowder
• Cockles with smoked chilli broth
• Penclawdd cockle chowder
• Cockles, laverbread and Welsh bacon

Crab

Crabs produce both white and brown meat. The sweet white meat comes from the claws, while the rich brown meat comes from the body, including the liver, which is considered a delicacy. Fans of crab say that this crustacean has sweeter tasting white meat than lobster has.

Male crabs tend to have larger claws and more white meat. However, the females can come with coral - a flavoursome red roe. You can buy a crab live and boil it yourself, or alternatively ask your fishmonger to kill it for you, or buy it ready cooked.

Crabmeat is great in pastas, salads, soups or soufflés. It goes well with cream, butter, lemon and chilli. Cooked crabmeat can be bought in cans too, which is useful for adding to pasta or making quick crabcakes, but the flavour is not as good as the fresh version.

• Dressed crab
• Crabcakes with a tomato, crab and basil dressing
• Crabcakes and mayonnaise
• Crab, saffron and leek quiche
• Individual crab soufflés

Lettuce

Lettuce was first cultivated as a medicine. Wild lettuce contains an active element with a mild sleep-inducing effect. Lettuce is now widely used in Asian and Western cookery. Cooked lettuce has long been popular in Asian kitchens - it is often stir-fried or blanched in China. It also makes a handy serving container for spicy minced meat salads in Thai or Korean cooking.

Cooked lettuce is becoming trendier in Europe - it all started with petit pois á la Française, the traditional dish of cooked peas and finely sliced lettuce. These days, chefs are adding it to risotto or grilling stuffed lettuce halves with cheese.

• Lettuce with oyster sauce
• An extraordinary way with lettuce
• Korean beef in lettuce Risotto with lettuce and spring onion
• Fish pie with petit pois á la Française

Spinach

Spinach is featured in cuisines all over the world. Full of vitamins and iron, its health-giving properties are well known, but it’s generally loathed by young children - in spite of Popeye’s attempts to promote its virtues.

Young leaves are best because older leaves can be tough. Spinach has a distinctly earthy flavour; the leaves can be enjoyed as a side vegetable or as salad, or they can be incorporated into a wide range of dishes including soups, pies, omelettes, soufflés or quiches.

• Mediterranean filo pastry pie
• Buttered spinach
• Spinach, mushroom and ricotta quiche with sautéed spinach
• Quesadillas with spinach and goats’ cheese

Spring lamb

Lamb is associated with spring in many cultures. In Christian cultures, it’s the roast to serve on Easter Sunday. Lamb is available all year round but spring lamb has small, slender bones with pink, rosy coloured flesh that is meltingly tender and more subtle than darker-fleshed summer or autumn lamb. Choose joints and cuts carefully; go for lean pieces and avoid any with yellow or crumbly fat.

• Roast leg of lamb with garlic and rosemary
• Spring lamb with spinach and feta rolls
• Spring lamb stew with ricotta dumplings
• Spiced spring lamb with black-eyed beansg

Wild garlic

In the UK, wild garlic (Allium ursinum) has many peculiar identities - ‘bear’s garlic’, ‘devil’s garlic’, ‘gypsy’s onions’ and ’stinking Jenny’ are just some of them. It’s no surprise that this seasonal ingredient is called so many names - it gives off an incredibly pungent smell in the wild. Unlike common cultivated garlic, it’s the leaves that are eaten rather than the bulbs. The taste is more delicate too, similar to the flavour of chives.

The leaves can be eaten raw or lightly cooked. Be sure to wash them well - some recipes also call for blanching the leaves for a few minutes in boiling water. Wild garlic can be stirred into risottos or omelettes, added to soups or used in sauces to accompany meat and fish.

• Honey and za’atar-glazed spring lamb with salsify and wild garlic purée
• Roast best end of lamb with garlic fritters and a wild garlic cream sauce
• Steamed monkfish with wild garlic and ginger

Many strange-sounding names float around on lists of salad ingredients in fashionable recipe books these days. But not many of us are lucky enough to live close to a well-stocked greengrocer or supermarket with a full array of new-age baby greens.

Often even the produce manager of a large supermarket can’t tell you what you are holding in your hand unless it is next to the sign that labels it.

To help ease the confusion, here is a brief list of “new” ingredients, few of which are actually new. Their availability in quantity is new, thanks to the demands of innovative chefs and today’s eating trends. I have included old stand-byes, too, with alternative names. Names, by the way, vary somewhat in different part of the country.

1. Iceberg or head lettuce is the most popular though the least nutritional of all the salad greens and taste rather blah, like a piece from an iceberg. When you say lettuce, most people conjure up a picture of an iceberg lettuce head. It is easy to grow, easy to store, has a long shelf life and it transports well.

That makes it inexpensive, always available, crisp and crunchy. Ever discover a hidden head weeks after tucking it into the refrigerator? It may be a little brown around the edges, even slimy here and there. But the inside is perfectly crisp and usable.

2. Romaine or cos lettuce has broad, stiff, upright leaves. It is the hardiest of all the lettuces and has the strongest flavor, though it is still mild. Great by itself, it is also good mixed with the more delicate salad greens as it adds a firm, extra crunchytexture and sturdiness.

3. Butter head , bibb, Boston, limestone or butter crunch lettuces are very tender and mild buttery-flavored. They form small loose heads. The various names refer to varieties, but they are fully interchangeable in salads and are not much different in taste.

4. Red leaf and green leaf lettuces don’t form heads and don’t keep quite as long as iceberg lettuce. They, too, have a mild flavor, although more flavorful than iceberg. They add bulk and interest to salads with their slightly wavy-structured, attractive colored leaves.

5. Spinach is popular in salads because of its vivid, dark peacock green color. It stands out and contrasts well among the more subdued colors. Raw spinach has a very mild, almost bland, flavor compared to the cooked form of this vegetable.

6. The cabbage family includes a large number of mild to strong-flavored greens that you may use in small amount with other greens. White and red cabbage are the most common. Both stay fresh and crisp for a long time.

Red cabbage adds a most desirable red to fuchsia color to salads, and in mid-winter it may be the only salad ingredient with a reddish color contrast that doesn’t cut deep into your food budget.

The several varieties of oriental vegetables in the cabbage family, like bok choy and napa cabbage, are very mild, but crisp, beautifully-textured, attractive-colored and readily available.

7. Arugula, also called rocket or roquette, is a small-leaved green with spicy, tangy, unusual flavor that mixes well with any salad green. Some people find its flavor too aggressive-use it in moderation.