Be honest about your love affair with wild garlic (then cook this)

Plus, an adoring wild garlic recipe. If garlic bread and chicken kiev had a lovechild it would be this: garlic butter flatbreads, crispy chicken and pickled radishes.

Food people get a bit silly about wild garlic.

As soon as the first shoots break the woodland floor, every Instagram post, every weekend supplement, every food magazine reeks of garlic. It’s the secret everyone knows about. It’s a branding thing. Wild garlic is considered the mark of a true ‘foodie’ (ghastly phrase). As if knowing where to pick it and what to do with it is shorthand for an authentic seasonal cook at one with the land.

And look, I get it.

Wild garlic is the gateway drug to foraging. It’s easy to find, easy to incorporate into all sorts of recipes, and there’s something wonderful about picking free food that has been collected in this way for generations. Plus, it arrives in the Hungry Gap when there is precious little else to get excited about. I of all people, can appreciate how it reconnects the picker with nature. But, and I’m sorry to sound curmudgeonly: guys, we get it now. We know. You aren’t letting us in on a big secret. Stop pretending we need to be told.

Let’s be honest.

Let’s cut the pretence that we are all, every year, discovering wild garlic and let’s just be honest about it: we pick wild garlic because it makes us feel like we are living an idyllic rural, seasonal, spontaneous life in the woods at the weekend, and then we can all go back to our Pret avocado wraps in the week.

And that’s just fine.

I like that food has the capacity to make us feel a certain way, part of a certain lifestyle. And I love that a free, wild food is so aspirational. Better that than butter boards. (Oh, wait.)

So this week, I’m offering a recipe that hope helps you live the wild garlic dream: a mash up of my favourite wild garlic dishes – chicken kiev and garlic bread – to make a wild garlic butter flatbread stuffed with crispy chicken and pickled radishes for pep.

Wild garlic butter flatbreads, crispy chicken & pickled radishes

If garlic bread and chicken kiev had a lovechild it would be this. The flatbreads are made using the same recipe as I do for my leek, chestnut and mushroom stuffed flatbreads but the dough is pressed out thinner so they are more acquiescent to being wrapped around the chicken. Make a bigger batch of the butter and keep it in the fridge for a few days, but no longer since the ratio of greenery to butter is high, limiting the shelf life but maximising the flavour.

Serves 2

For the pickles:

• 175g radishes