River Cottage kitchen diary: March

"It's warming up down here on the farm and green shoots are starting to appear in the garden. In the kitchen that means we've got some more exciting ingredients to work with at last," says Sam Lomas.

It's been great to use wild garlic again, which is now coming out in East Devon. It's such a fantastic ingredient.

If there was ever a wild ingredient that could sell someone the idea of actually foraging some of their food it would be wild garlic. It's abundant in woods and by streams all over the UK and it's also incredibly tasty in a totally different way to cultivated garlic.

I think that so often with the resurgence of wild foods in restaurants it's a case of style over substance. For example, it might sound cool to say you use wild water mint on your menu, but that doesn't make up for the fact that it tastes like an unpleasant version of cultivated mint.

But there's no such problem with wild garlic and we've been slinging it on top of pizzas, stirring it into barley risottos and simmering it into sauces with enthusiasm.

Another welcome ingredient this time of year is rhubarb. We're getting lots of the forced stuff in the kitchen, grown in dark sheds the rhubarb grows very tall very quickly, looking for the light.

It's very tender and delicate so we often give it the simplest of treatments, a generous drizzle of honey from obliging Dorset bees and a quick roast in a medium oven for ten minutes. It's just right when it's still retains it's shape and bright pink colour.

March is a much more optimistic month in the kitchen than January and February. More ingredients available, longer days, more sunshine and the first outdoor barbecue opportunities of the year, things are looking up!

By Sam Lomas.

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River Cottage kitchen diary: March

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