Wild garlic season runs from March - May in the UK and this recipe is well worth the effort.  If you can’t find wild garlic, Waitrose sells it frozen.

Ingredients
1 tbsp oil
800g chestnut mushrooms, finely sliced
50ml red wine vinegar
200g rainbow chard, leaves and stems separated, the stems cut into ½ cm pieces and the leaves shredded
100g shallots, very finely chopped
1 garlic clove, minced
Freshly grated nutmeg, to taste
250g ricotta
75g Parmesan
Roughly 250g fresh lasagne sheets

Ingredients for the Brown Butter Béchamel
425ml milk
50g flour
50g butter
50g cheddar, grated
75g Parmesan

Ingredients for the herb oil
100g wild garlic
100ml flavourless oil

Method
Get a bowl of iced water and put to one side.  Bring a pan of water to the boil. Blanch the wild garlic for the oil for 10 seconds then plunge into ice cold water for 10 seconds.  Remove the herbs to a muslin cloth, clean tea towel or sturdy kitchen roll and squeeze out as much of the water as you can.

Put the wild garlic into a blender or food processor until broken down and then pour in the oil. Blend again until the oil is a brighter green. Pass the oil through a muslin into a jug and then pour into sealable, airtight container.

Into a large pan put a tbsp of oil and put the heat on high.  Add the mushrooms and some salt and pepper and cook for a few minutes until the mushrooms are slightly softened.  You will need to constantly stir to stop them from burning as the heat is so high.  Add the red wine vinegar and thoroughly stir making sure you get the bottom. Reduce the heat to medium and add the chard stems, shallots and garlic and cook for 5 minutes.

When the mushroom mix has cooked, check the seasoning, add a grating of nutmeg and stir through.  Fold through the shredded chard leaves and put to one side.

Meanwhile, to make your béchamel put the butter into a small pan and melt over a medium high heat.  When the butter has melted, leave it cooking for around 5 minutes, stirring to stop the impurities burning to the bottom of the pan.  When the butter is beautiful nutty brown in both colour and aroma, add the flour and vigorously stir until the butter has incorporated and then keep cooking and stirring for another minute.  Slowly add your milk a bit at a time, stirring to ensure there are no lumps as you go.  Leave the sauce to cook on a low heat for 5 minutes.  Turn off the heat, add the cheese and stir until melted.  Check the seasoning of your cheese sauce and adjust where necessary.

Mix 2 tbsps of the wild garlic oil and the ricotta and Parmesan through the mushroom mix.  With your spoon, ‘divide’ the mix in the pan into 4 so you know how much to use per layer.

Before assembling, remove the pasta sheets from the packet and work out how many sheets you need per layer for your dish. We are aiming for 4 layers of mushroom, 4 layers of pasta and a layer of cheese, you may need to cut your sheets to fit.

In your oven dish, add a quarter of the mushroom mix and evenly spread over the bottom of your dish and top with a layer of the pasta sheets. Repeat 3 more times, ending with a layer of pasta.  Cover with the cheese sauce.

Put into the oven and bake for 30-45 minutes until golden brown and bubbling.

When it comes out of the oven, leave it for 5 minutes and then put some of the wild garlic oil over the top.

- An adaptation of a recipe by Robert Thompson from Great British Chefs: Vegetables