The British love to talk about the weather. Especially here in Cornwall, every morning starts with a "you alright? Yeah, rank weather we've got today." When I first got here, nearly everyone I met told me about the long, miserable winter I'd missed. Maybe it's just that the weather controls so much here: the surf, the produce. Or maybe it's that it changes so often. In April, it's been warming days oscillating between thick showers and sunshine - moments of apocalyptic rain and 15' swells, followed by idyllic sunny days that make me feel like this is the best place on Earth.
Spring means the produce is going wild; in three weeks, our garden went from dormant to flourishing with baby radishes, flowering mustards, rhubarb, and lettuce. There's that pregnant feeling in the air; the mangalitsa pigs are pregnant and starting to lactate, the birds are circling their nests in the high trees. It feels exciting, new, rich with second chances like Spring is supposed to. There's wild garlic and three-cornered leeks, nettles, and fiddlehead ferns lining all the roads and footpaths - lush, edible forests growing in the hedgerows.
I drove out to Porthcurno Beach today, the most Southwestern point of England, in a storm, and watched the waves crash into the jutting cliffs; three-cornered leeks were growing all over the cliffs, and beginning to blossom: the white flowers, growing at the top, were seasoned by the sea breeze: salty and garlicky.
The blossoms, if you catch them before they flower, make an amazing pickle. Pick them and salt them overnight in a jar. You can eyeball this, or if you want to be more precise - add 2% salt to the weight of the leek blossoms. Then cover them with apple cider vinegar and let them sit at room temperature until they're as fermented and pickly as you want them to be.