Wild Garlic (Bärlauch) Pesto

Wild garlic of bärlauch in German, literally translated as Bear's garlic, is a seasonal plant that grows around this time of the year all over Germany. It smells like garlic and it is said that bears are very fond of it that they would eat a bunch of it right after waking up from their winter hibernation. Although, it is rare to spot bears in Germany these days that would eat wild garlic, there are some dangers collecting them from the forest on your own since it has two poisonous doppelgänger. I have written more about this in another blog.

If you get your hands on this delicious gift of spring, you can turn it into pesto! You can use it and store it in many ways. We use it as a bread spread, mix it as a sauce for pasta or even make pesto rice with it, I'll explain more of the variations later. Storing it is also very easy since you can keep it in the fridge for up to a month or freeze it for a year's supply. Here's the recipe. Enjoy!

Preparation time: 20 minutes

Good for: 1 jar

Ingredients:

500 g wild garlic (bärlauch)

250 ml olive oil

75 g walnuts or pine seeds, toasted

75 g parmesan or pecorino, finely grated

1 tsp freshly squeezed lemon

Salt

Pepper

Turmeric

Directions:

1. Wash the wild garlic and dry them with a salad spinner or kitchen towels.

2. Chop the wild garlic to make it easier for the blender to mix it.

3. Put the wild garlic, pine nuts and grated cheese in the blender and pour in the olive oil.

4. Run the blender on full speed for 3 minutes to make sure all the ingredients are finely mixed and there are no big chunks left.

5. Add salt, pepper, a pinch of turmeric to taste. 

6. Add a teaspoon of freshly squeezed lemon and run the blender again for 1 minute.

7. Pour in jar for storage.

Variations:

Wild garlic pesto pasta - you can cook any sort of pasta and use the pesto as a sauce. If you want, you can add slightly fried cherry tomatoes and mushrooms to it

Wild garlic pesto rice - you can mix the pesto with rice and top it with some stir-fried tomatoes, mushrooms and soy-meat

Wild garlic pesto bread spread - you can use the pesto as a bread spread for breakfast or a snack for a tasty treat!

Storage:

1. If you want a constant supply of it that can last about a month in the fridge, you pour it in a clean (preferably sterilized) jar and cover the top with some olive oil. Just make sure each time you get some pesto, clean the rim of the jar with a paper towel to keep molds from growing on them.

2. To keep the pesto longer for a year's supply, pour the pesto on ice cube trays and freeze it. Once frozen, you can transfer the cubes to a ziplock bag and keep them in the freezer for up to a year. Whenever you feel like wild garlic pesto, simply defrost the amount of cubes you want to use.