Come home to roast

Few dishes sing with the earthy flavours of spring like roast chicken infused with wild garlic, or a fine nettle soup. Nigel Slater is on the scent

Everywhere is fizzing with the acid green of spring. The vegetable patch has its first feathery fronds of fennel; the greengrocers their early Jersey potatoes; the markets are showing off the new lettuces and the country lanes are reeking with shoots of wild garlic.

Wild garlic - ransomes - have all the pungent scent of the fat cloves we have in the larder, but a subtler flavour. So subtle you can stuff the leaves in a pan with a slice of butter and a mere splash of water, give them five minutes or less to soften, then serve them as a vegetable. Last weekend I poked a bundle of them inside the cavity of a big organic chicken and let them send gentle waves of garlic through the bird as it roasted.

Those Jersey potatoes, often mulched with seaweed in an attempt to make them taste like they used to, are worth every penny. The kidney-shaped potatoes can be piled into a steamer basket and cooked over boiling water for 10 minutes, till you can pierce them easily with a skewer. I like to commit heresy with mine even this early in the season and add the newly steamed potatoes to the chicken roasting pan for the last 15 minutes, so they come out moist and glistening with the pan juices.

Those whose nettles escaped the Easter holiday garden tidy-up might like to include them in a soup of spring greens with lettuce or spinach. Either will give a soup of unmistakable greenness and a peppery freshness. Do use gloves, though: even the young tips can pack a punch. And if anyone tells you that nettles left for an hour or so after cutting will have lost their sting, don't believe a word of it.

I like to tip a few frozen peas in my spring soup, which I know is cheating, but they bring with them a freshness as well as thickening the result. My own were only sown just before Easter, and even then I should have waited till the soil had warmed up, so frozen it is. But the Italian ones might be around for those who are too grand to rub shoulders with Mr Bird's Eye. I am not generally a croutons kind of cook, but a few toasted snippets in a green soup are very welcome, especially if the bread is sourdough.

I feel we have turned a corner this week; much later than one likes, but the sap is well and truly rising now. Well... mine is.

Spring chicken with young garlic leaves

While putting garlic leaves inside the chicken sends a subtle, aromatic note through the roasting bird, its real point is to add flavour to the gravy. Oh, and you can eat the leaves, too, like spinach. Serves 4.

1 large free-range chicken
2 large handfuls of garlic leaves
80g butter
1 lemon, halved
a large head of new season's pink garlic
2 small glasses of white wine, white vermouth or stock

Set the oven to 200C/gas mark 6. Place the chicken in a roasting tin. Rinse the garlic leaves then stuff them inside the chicken with half the butter and the halved lemon. Rub the remaining butter over the outside of the chicken and season it with salt and black pepper. Break the head of garlic into individual cloves, then squash them lightly with the flat of a knife, just enough to break them open. Scatter them round the outside of the chicken.

Turn the bird breast side down in the tin and roast in the preheated oven till its juices run clear when the thickest part of its flesh is pierced with a skewer. (Just over an hour, depending on the size of your chicken.)

Turn the bird the right way up after 30 minutes in the oven.

Lift the chicken on to a heated plate and keep warm, pour away any excess fat from the roasting tin, leaving the darker juices and sediment behind, put the tin over a moderate heat and pour in the wine or stock. Bring to the boil, scraping at the crusty bits clinging on to the tin and letting them dissolve, and mashing the garlic cloves into the liquid with a fork. Season with salt and pepper. Strain through a sieve (or pour into a warm jug, holding the crushed garlic back with a fork). Carve the chicken and serve with the pan juices.

Nettle and lettuce soup

This is not a thick soup, and nor should it be. For a thicker soup you could add a finely diced potato to the onion, though it will take a little longer to cook. Makes enough for 4.

4 spring onions
a thick slice of butter - about 20g
1 small carrot
1 small garlic clove
1.5 litres of stock (vegetable or chicken)
a small to medium-sized lettuce
100g nettle leaves
160g peas

Cut the roots and most of the dark green leaves from the spring onions and discard them. Slice the onions thinly and let them soften with the butter in a large saucepan while you peel and finely chop the carrot and garlic. Add both to the pan and stir occasionally while they become tender. Heat the stock and pour it in.

Wash and tear up the lettuce leaves and add them to the stock with the thoroughly washed nettles, peas and a seasoning of salt and pepper. Bring back to the boil, then simmer for about 7-10 minutes until the nettles are tender but all is still bright green.

Blitz in a blender or food processor till smooth, then check the seasoning.

Yogurt cream

I have taken to eating my passion fruit with a soft, slightly sharp mixture of crème fraîche and natural yogurt dusted with coconut palm sugar. With flavours of fudge and coconut, this artisan-made, sustainable sugar is made from the nectar of the coconut palm flowers. For more information try Light muscovado is a more accessible stand-in.

300g thick, natural yogurt
150ml crème fraîche
2 egg whites

to serve:

6 passion fruit
4 tsp coconut palm or muscovado sugar

Line a stainless-steel sieve or colander with clean, new muslin, leaving enough overhanging to fold over the top. In a cold bowl mix the yogurt and crème fraîche. Do this thoroughly but gently. Beat the egg whites in a separate bowl till light and stiff. Fold the egg whites into the cream mixture, taking care not to knock the air out. A large metal spoon is good for this.

Spoon the mixture into the lined sieve. Fold the muslin over the top, place the sieve over a basin and leave in the fridge overnight. (If you have a small fridge, you may have to take a shelf out to fit it in.)

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