Mother Nature’s wild foods – so mysterious, labour and time intensive and well, impractical (not at all like our own mothers then!) Often when we think of ‘foraging’ and ‘wild foods’, images of muddy wellies, roots and barks, hands full of nettle stings and bags of funny tasting, green looking stuff that we don’t really know what to do with come to mind! But wild food is our connection to nature. At The Wild Food Café, we truly believe that if more people took the time to connect with the abundance of local, natural, nutrient dense food that is freely available to everyone, people would reconnect with their intuition, with the ecosystem, with their health and wellbeing and with their innate knowledge of what’s good for their bodies. Pretty important stuff!
Wild foods, eaten in tune with the seasons, connect us with the cycles of nature – awakening vitality and life-force and bringing more lightness, mental and emotional clarity into our lives.
But where do you start? You start with what’s the easiest and most accessible to you.
At this time of year, with the warmer weather temptingly around the corner, wild garlic is in abundance and if you can’t get to a forest to forage for it then find a farmer’s market where you’ll find big beautiful bunches of wild garlic, nettles and other delightful herby greens to turn into delicious recipes like our lemony quinoa pots with wild garlic pesto.
Lemony Quinoa Pots with Caramelised Purple Carrot & Wild Garlic Pesto
These delicious lunch pots are packed full of Mother Nature’s abundance of springtime herby greens for a super food boost at lunch time to add a little colour to another cold day! They are best prepared the night before and stored in a clip lid jar ready to grab in the morning…
Ingredients
(serves 2)
Base
1 cup of quinoa or other grain of your choice (e.g. millet, amaranth or wild rice)
1 tbsp coconut oil
2 shallots
½ tsp turmeric powder
Unprocessed sea salt to taste
½ lemon
1 stem fresh mint leaves
Caramelised Carrots
3-4 organic purple carrots sliced
1 tbsp coconut oil
3-4 cloves crushed garlic
½ tsp coriander seeds
½ tsp smoked paprika
Pinch of fresh rosemary leaves
1 tbsp maple syrup
1 tbsp tamari
Unprocessed sea salt to taste
½ lemon
Wild Garlic Pesto
1 bunch of wild garlic
20g of soft sun-dried tomatoes
30g of pine nuts
10g of fresh basil
20g extra virgin olive oil
½ lemon, juiced
Pinch of unprocessed sea salt
Method
For the base:
Heat a pan with some coconut oil, gently sauté some finely chopped shallots, add ½ tsp of turmeric powder and then stir in the quinoa, add sea salt to taste and lastly enough water to cover the quinoa by the width of about two fingers. Do not overcook as you want the quinoa nice and firm. Once cooked, squeeze half a lemon over the quinoa and mix in a few chopped mint leaves for extra freshness.
For the caramelised carrots:
Heat a pan with some coconut oil or sunflower oil. Add the crushed garlic, coriander seeds, smoked paprika and rosemary. Let the spices roast for a minute or two. Add sliced or chopped carrots and sauté for 4-5 minutes or till tender on medium heat. Add maple syrup and tamari and mix well. Finally, add salt to taste and squeeze in half a lemon. Sauté for another 5 minutes on a low heat.
For the pesto:
In a food processor add wild garlic, sun dried tomatoes and pine nuts and blend. Add basil leaves (no stalks), olive oil, the juice of ½ a lemon, salt and whizz again. Do not over-blend the basil with the oil, as it will wilt and go brown.
Assemble your lunch pot, store in the fridge (or eat right away) and enjoy!
This recipe sounds absolutely delicious and has lots of my favourite ingredients! What a great idea to make for lunch in a mason jar! Healthy food to go! I love it!
I’m a big foraging fan and love wild garlic, it’s a bit early though just starting to shoot up in Glasgow!
I will most definitely be trying this! Thanks!