Bright Sparks

Bright sparks, creative hands, young minds. Working with three local artists - Colm Docherty, Sam Jones and Sandi Kiehlmann.....

...local kids explore their creativity - discovering textures, drawing and sketching built  and natural environment, using natural materials as artistic tools and resources and more....

These workshops were run as part of the beautiful and extraordinary Julie Brook exhibition at the Burgh Hall Dunoon - art inspiring art inspiring our bright sparks.

All images are ©Burgh Hall Dunoon and Powan Ltd - If you would like a print of any of these or other images on the blog or to find out more about my work, please contact me at www.therainboweffect.co.uk or powanmedia@gmail.com for details on sizes and prices, and please feel free to post a comment! Feedback is always gratefully received - thanks for reading!!

Spring Greens - Wild Garlic #3

April showers, warmer weather, much rain. Wild Garlic is abundant on the edge of the forest so for our third year we have been foraging, nibbling and cooking like it's going out of fashion.

First job - a batch of Wild Garlic Pesto - made just like normal pesto but with ramsons instead of fresh basil leaves.

Since then we've made carrot and wild garlic broth with green lentils, roasted a cod loin wrapped in wild garlic with olive oil and lemon juice, constructed a splendid pizza with wild garlic pesto instead of tomato sauce and topped with enoki mushrooms, feta, goats and mozzarella cheeses. 

There's been a plethora of wild garlic and mushroom pasta sauces, various tarts loaded with goats cheeses, mushrooms, wild garlic, some pan fried potatoes with chilli flakes, onion and wild garlic.

Aubergine, spinach and wild garlic curry is in the planning stages....it's a delicious time of year!

Ramsoned by Nature

Well, it's that time of year again when the ramsons or wild garlic are in abundance in the glen. Every year we have a large patch opposite the house on the other side of the sheep field and we tend to go a bit daft, adding wild garlic to just about everything. This year is no exception. Free, delicious and bountiful - what's not to like!

Ramsons or Allium ursinum AKA wild garlic, buckrams or bear's garlic

The Bold Foragers - that's me and our Effie - headed off earlier in the week with some plastic bags for a toddle round and half an hour of gathering the delicious leaves. 

Bold Forager Effie

Getting stuck in!

A Bold Forager heads home

Then home, where we washed the first lot, patted them dry and made some wild garlic pesto - this was served up later, swirled in some creme fraiche, with pan fried mushrooms on a bed of spaghetti.  In addition we quickly concocted some home-made garlic and ramsons bread - baked for 10 minutes in the oven, I have to say this was the best garlic bread I have ever eaten.

Washed, dried and ready to be made into Pesto

Last night saw prawns cooked in olive oil with shallots and minced wild garlic and chillies served with creamy mash that had some more chopped ramsons stirred through it and a baby leaf salad. See what I mean - mad for it!


Tonight, Spanish Tortilla with wild garlic and shallots, Feta, Wensleydale and Gran Padano cheeses served with baby leaf, spinach and wild garlic salad.


And so it will continue, adding it to fish dishes, baked new potatoes, soups, salads, whatever springs to mind; until we have run out of ramsons or gotten so sick of them that we give up! I reckon on the latter.

Delicious and free, straight from the field!

Ain't nature grand!

So, it all started when I went to the fridge to get a jar of ready-made pesto from a well known Supermarket. It looked like this, despite not being opened that long:

Yes, "We're not eating that" our Bobby rightly pointed out.

Ah, what to do - Mum's staple teatime dish, kaput - until I looked across the sheep field to the trees beyond and 'Voila', there was the answer to my problem - a big patch of Wild Garlic! So arming myself with Tupperware I yomped down the track, over to the trees and picked a big bunch of this delicious smelling and very tasty plant (is it a plant, dunno!). I headed back, and had the good fortune to have the rest of the ingredients I needed, otherwise the kids would have been eating pasta with blanched ramsons leaves cut into wee bits. Googling 'Wild Garlic Pesto' I found this recipe and adapted it to my own needs (pinenuts as no walnuts, but walnuts would be delicious! / no garlic / lots of pepper / didn't blanch the leaves as couldn't be arsed, just washed and pressed dry then shredded into the blender with all the other ingredients and walloped it all up together!!)

So from this

To this

And finally this!

all in the whizz of mini food blender and the shake of a local lambs tail! It was truly delicious, subtle and tasty. In fact it was so good, me and the Old Bugger had some for our dinner as well. I'll be making some more - we got through the first batch in two days and there is a truly huge patch of Wild Garlic to get through - Woop!

But it all goes to show, when the chips are down, it's Mother Nature that is the necessity of invention - especially when the nearest shop is a three mile drive away at 5.00pm teatime!

Y-U-M!!