Enthusiastic recent attendees of Mark Williams’ first Galloway Wild Food workshops of the year (highly recommend), we have been keeping our eyes peeled for a few things… Few flowered leek has been one of them!

Imagine our surprise to spot a few few flowered leek growing not ten paces from Malcolm’s house!

We made a delicious tea (the eating kind!) of the few flowered leek!  We added in its native cousin, wild garlic and some nettle tips, sorrel, dock and lots of barley. With just a shake of paprika and some soya sauce to taste, it was fabulous!

Few Flowered Leek Facts

• Few flowered leek, or allium paradoxum, is in the onion family (you can tell by the smell!)
• It is native to mountainous regions of Iran, Caucasus, and Turkmenistan
  
• They are considered ‘invasive’ in the UK, so it is illegal to spread them in the wild…
• As such, it is good to pick them in abundance, using everything from bulb to flower (unlike wild garlic, it is illegal to uproot (or upbulb?) that)
• It has a delicate fresh spring flavour
• The flavour in the oils is lost when cooking, so put it in the pot last
• Use raw or cooked, you can use it in a similar way to spring onion
• Pollinated by bees and other insects, few flowered leek is hermaphrodite, it has both male and female organs
• You can try using the juice of few flowered leek as a moth repellent!
• Here is a video with some identification tips.