I have been trying to use more wild garlic leaves this Spring – usually I forget about them until the season is over. This recipe – Braised Pearl Barley, Smoked Chicken and Wild Garlic from Tom Kerridge’s Proper Pub Food – has quickly become a midweek favourite for us.

It’s a risotto-like dish, but the nuttier crunch of the pearly barley contrasts perfectly with the smoky sweetness of the chicken and the silky texture and mild pungency of the wild garlic leaves. I find that the quantities of the core ingredients, which Kerridge says are for four to six, are perfect for two very filling supper portions plus a couple of lunches from what’s left.

The key to this dish is to simmer the skin and bones from half a smoked chicken (I freeze the other half for making the same dish again a week or two later) in about 1.5 litres of chicken stock so that the stock also takes on a smoky flavour.

Kerridge then softens an onion in 25g of butter and 50 ml of oil (rapeseed in his case; I ease up on the butter a little), adds 350g pearl barley and a quarter of the strained smoked chicken stock, then carries on adding the stock as with a risotto – for a total of about 40 minutes. Once the pearly barley is tender, but still with a little bite, he adds the flaked chicken.

Kerridge adds 100g of Parmesan and 75g of butter, but these amounts seem generous to me (this book was before he lost weight!). I haven’t even tried those quantities and reckon the dish achieves the requisite balance of rich, buttery, cheesy and salty with about 60-75g of Parmesan and about 30g of butter.

The dish is finished off with the juice of a lemon (it may need a bit less if you have eased up on the Parmesan and butter), seasoning and 100g of wild garlic (a couple of handfuls). I remove any stalks, but keep the garlic leaves whole unless they seem too big. Tom Kerridge adds two tablespoons of chopped chives, but I don’t think I have ever done this.

The detailed recipe is here.

The wild garlic really is the star of this dish. The long leaves wind their way silkily – that is the perfect word – through the pearly barley and smoked chicken, adding an aromatic pungency but without being in any way what we would normally think of as ‘too garlicky’. As I say, this has rapidly become a favourite midweek dish. My only challenge is that I have not found a source of smoked chicken where I can be confident of the welfare standards – the smokiness means the taste is fine, but I would be happier if I could easily find smoked chicken that I knew was free range.