With a wild garlic patch thriving just outside my kitchen door we are using it quite a bit in our day to day cooking now that it is in season. In Germany, many friends of ours talked about wild garlic soup. We regrettably never tried wild garlic until returning to England. Last year I tried making wild garlic soup using onion and vegetable stock. I did like it but thought that some of the German recipes using cream seemed more interesting.

Today we had cream of wild garlic soup. It is loosly based on an Allgäu recipe but avoids the potato which I feel spoils the texture; that's just my prejudice and many people would differ from me.

Serves 4

Ingredients

100 g wild garlic (see comment below)
two medium onions
700 ml vegetable stock
300 ml single cream
1 tbsp vegetable oil

Method

1. Finely chop the onions and fry in the oil at a medium heat for 10 minutes
2. Wash the wild garlic leaves and chop them (set a few aside if you want to use them for garnish)
3. Add the wild garlic, then the vegetable stock to the onions
4. Leave on the heat for about 2 minutes
5. Blend the soup until the wild garlic pieces are fairly fine
6. Add the cream, mix well, leave for a few more minutes then serve
7. Optionally add small leaves as a garnish

Comments
a) In the UK I have never seen wild garlic for sale in a greengrocer so you need to gather it or grow your own. My rule of thumb is that I have a 20 cm diameter colander and if I fill it with leaves it works out at very close to 100 grams.
b) Don't overheat the soup after cream is added as it will curdle at some point
c) I don't like potato in soups but you might; the soup as described is fairly thin. The original recipe included a potato or you might try a parsnip which would give more body.