Naughty Wild Garlic & Chard Gratin
Wild garlic is the kind of ingredient that makes you feel slightly smug for knowing it's there. It creeps up through damp hedgerows and woodland floors each spring - unmistakable, intensely fragrant, and available for what feels like about three weeks before it disappears entirely. If you see it, buy it. Or pick it, if you know where to look.
This gratin started as a fairly classic Swiss chard bake; cream, mustard, gruyère, the kind of thing you pull together on a Tuesday and feel quietly pleased about and then we started adding things. Butter beans for body and creaminess. Thyme because it belongs wherever cream and cheese do. And then the wild garlic, stirred through at the last moment so it holds onto its fragrance.
The result is richer than the sum of its parts: deeply savoury, with a golden, bubbling top and a soft, yielding interior.
We like Bold Beans for this - their butter beans are firmer and more flavourful than most tins, and the name feels appropriate for a recipe that's trying to be something. But a standard tin works perfectly well. Drain it well, either way.
Serve straight from the dish. Good bread nearby. Something cold and white to drink!
Ingredients
Bunch chard - 340g
Double cream - 150ml
Wholegrain mustard or gluten-free alternative - 1 tbsp
Gruyère coarsely grated -140g
Butter for greasing as needed
Parmesan finely grated 4x tbsp
Butter beans Bold Beans recommended - 1 tin
Fresh thyme. few sprigs
Wild garlic Seasonala generous handful, leaves only - large handful
Method
1 Heat your oven to 200°C / 180°C fan / gas 6. Strip the chard leaves from the stalks, then cut the stalks into short sticks. Bring a pan of salted water to the boil and cook the stalks for 3–4 mins until starting to soften. Add the leaves for a final minute or so, just until wilted. Drain well - very well.
Press the chard in a colander and if it seems waterlogged, squeeze it in a clean cloth. Excess water will make the gratin loose.
2 While the chard drains, warm a knob of butter in a pan over medium heat. Add the drained butter beans and thyme leaves with a good pinch of salt. Cook for 3–4 mins, letting the beans catch a little colour. Roughly chop the wild garlic and stir through off the heat — the residual warmth is enough to wilt it while keeping the flavour vivid.Wild garlic turns muddy and bitter over direct heat. Always add it at the end, or fold it in raw.
3 Mix the double cream with the wholegrain mustard. Combine with the drained chard and the butter bean mixture, then stir through most of the gruyère. Season generously. Grease a medium gratin dish with butter, then spread the mixture in evenly.
4 Scatter the remaining gruyère and all of the parmesan across the top. Bake for 30 mins, until bubbling at the edges and deeply golden on top. If you want more colour, a couple of minutes under the grill finishes it perfectly. Serve straight from the dish.
A few notes
Wild garlic season in the UK runs roughly from late March through May, depending on the year and where you are. Look for it along damp hedgerows, canal banks, and woodland edges - it smells unmistakably of garlic when you crush a leaf between your fingers. If you can't find it, a small bunch of garlic chives, or a clove of roasted garlic stirred through, is a reasonable substitute. It won't be the same, but it'll still be good.
Bold Beans do a jarred butter bean that's noticeably better than most supermarket tins - firmer, more flavourful, less watery. Worth keeping a jar in the cupboard. That said, a standard tin of butter beans, well-drained, works fine here.
This sits somewhere between a side dish and a main. We eat it as a main, with crusty bread, and consider it a very good Tuesday.
Enjoy Enjoy Ennnnnjoy xo
