In this simple wild food recipe, I combine Lady’s Smock with Three Cornered Leek and tomatoes for a quick and easy side-salad.
Lady’s Smock (Cardamine pratensis), also known as Cuckooflower, is one of my favourite edible wild flowers. Delicate and beautiful I never really use much as it’s not that prolific. It packs a punch though with a fiery taste similar to a strong mustard.
Three Cornered Leek (Allium triquetrum) is coming to the end where I live. It’s part of the Lily family and is great used in salads, as it imparts a mild garlicky onion flavour.
A perfect replacement to mono-cultured spring onions that are so ubiquitous in British salads!
Three Cornered Leek Recipe Ingredients
- 2 good handfuls of Three Cornered Leek
- a few sprigs of Lady’s Smock
- 3 large, ripe tomatoes
- a good glug of olive oil
- balsamic vinegar
- sea salt
- black pepper
Three Cornered Leek Recipe Instructions
- Pick the fern like leaves from the stalk of Lady’s Smock and put in a salad bowl, along with the flowers.
- Chop up the Three Cornered Leek and add.
- Chop the tomatoes and add.
- Pour a good glug of olive oil onto the salad.
- Add enough balsamic vinegar to satisfy your desired taste.
- Add a pinch of sea salt and pepper.
- Serve with a good artisan bread, or as an accompaniment to your main meal.
I love cuckoo-flowers – my favourite spring flower – but I never knew you could eat them! Where we used to live up near Exmoor, they grew in abundance in our fields. Now we’ve moved just four miles further south, we hardly see them (though there’s one brave pioneer in the garden this year, I notice!)