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Kamut risotto with nettles and gorse flowers

Posted on April 8, 2008 | Leave a comment

This dish is a bit like an Oscar-award winning ceremony so bear with me while I thank a few people.

Firstly Elena Renier for inspiring me to use nettle tops in a risotto. Secondly Chloë for telling me on a walk over the cliff path at Cockington in north Devon that gorse flowers are both edible – and nature’s cure for depression.

I have always loved the spiky gorse bushes’ bright yellow flowers but when I found out I could eat them – and have a mood-change into the bargain – I was ecstatic! (Or was it the gorse petals I was munching en route?).

So, back in the kitchen, I fried a sliced onion and added a mug of kamut grain (instead of rice) to the hot olive oil. Then I poured in two mugs of water, added a pinch of rock salt and let it all simmer for 30 minutes.

I washed the nettle tops that Mike had kindly helped me pick (another Oscar thank you to him) and snipped the plentiful dark green leaves (six ounces in weight) with scissors so they fitted in the pan. They took about ten minutes to wilt and add their wonderful creamy spinach-y taste.

I love nettles! I cannot believe that eight days ago I was a nettle-picking virgin. My first use in nettle soup is here.

It’s Be Nice to Nettles Week soon (14 – 25 May 2008) when we stop thinking of them as nasty weeds and realise how wonderful they are.

I know nettles sting if you forget your gloves or do not use the proper ‘folding’ procedure but I do not care. The sting is not dangerous and may even be good for me.

The world faces a rice shortage so can I do my bit by eating kamut grain instead? I have selfish reasons too for I have come to love this bursting-with-health grain.

So, oscar-thanks to the universe for providing good things to eat.

Oh, and universe, while I am in prayerful mode, please knock sense into the powers-that-be to ensure food is shared more fairly and no one goes starving.

Thank you (she says, waving her metaphorical statuette in the air and leaving the stage).

Couscous cousins

Posted on February 20, 2008 | 1 comment

Plate with grated carrots, greens and couscous

Why do people eat pot noodles when there is couscous is in the world? Listen, all you do is pour boiling water over the grains (processed to a teeny size), let five minutes go by while they plump up with water, add olive oil and lo, instant food.

My current top favourite couscous is made from kamut (by Probios) which is good news for all you wheat-sensitive types.

Tonight I added to the couscous, chives (one of the few herbs I can grow as I have pink fingers). I fried onions, mushrooms and chilli, then grated raw carrots (organic of course) and served them with steamed kale and purple sprouting broccoli (cut up quite small).

I made one meal stretch for two unexpected guests, Sarah, my middle daughter, and Juliette, my eldest niece. Juliette, just turned 18, explained how traumatic it was. However she immediately noticed the benefits of being grown up.

How? quizzed Sarah, my daughter the social anthropologist.

Juliette said: “Like. Oh. My. God. I suddenly stopped listening to my story tapes.”

Juliette (pictured) was also disappointed with Delia. “People who are interested in food are just not going to buy Delia. She seems really old fashioned now,” she said.

My mum – the original real food lover empress – is also incensed with Delia for recommending convenience foods while so-called championing the poor. My mother’s letter begins: “Bleeding heart Delia has not done her sums right.”

My mother’s family, immigrants from Russia, lived in the East End of London. They had little on the table and very rarely meat. But they ate well because they knew about food.

Reader, such is my provenance.