Tag Archives: nettles

Nettle soup is the one to make

Posted on April 5, 2009 | 23 comments

nettles-and-wild-garlic-rinsed-in-colander

Sometimes an idea takes years to come to fruition. It has distinct stages such as scoffing, curiosity, acceptance then habit.

Take nettles. I used to think eating them was weird. But over the years the idea started to intrigue.

Last spring in Westward Ho! Chloë showed me a patch of nettles, and how to pick then with gloves, the freshest top leaves according to another blogger. Nettles were no longer alien as I cooked them in pasta and soup and found them delicious.

Perhaps precisely because nettles are wild and have not been cultivated or hybridised, they taste extra-vibrant and are highly-nutritious.

This spring, in Bristol, I saw nettles growing and thought “soup”. Then on Friday I overheard Leona, the owner of St Werburgh’s City Cafe talking about: “nettles and wild garlic soup.”

The next day Mike and I found ourselves on a magical walk beside the river Avon in a mysterious part of the city. An abundance of nettles and wild garlic grew.

conham-on-the-river-avon

I picked up a discarded Tesco plastic bag (litter bugs have their place in the universe), sniffed it, found it clean and after borrowing a glove, started pinching off the fresh greens and filling the bag.

The next morning, I weighed the nettles and the wild garlic: 4 ounces.It didn’t seem enough – but it was.

I cut up a fat onion and gently fried it in 2 tablespoons of olive oil in a saucepan. I let it stew for an hour with the lid on, so the onion was soft and a bit caramelised. I was experimenting but you could fry the onion for much less time (like 10 minutes or so).

I added 900 mls of water. To thicken the soup I added 1 ounce of raw oats.

Then I snipped in the washed nettles and wild garlic, and let it simmer for about five minutes and turned off the saucepan. The soup carried on cooking with the lid on.

And it was delicious.

Can you get food more real than nettle soup?

nettle-and-wild-garlic-and-onion-and-oat-soup

Proud to fly the Food Renegade flag, I contribute this blog on local and sustainable Nettle Soup to Fight Back Fridays to help overturn the domination of industrialised food!

foodrenegadefist_150

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Posted in eating well on a budget, food, health, recipe, recipe idea, sustainable, vegan

Tagged Avon River, food renegade, nettles, St Werburgh's city farm café, vegan, wild garlic, wild harvest

Nettles in Amsterdam

Posted on May 24, 2008 | 4 comments

Nettles opposite bandstand

I nibbled on these nettles in Amsterdam, a week ago. Nettle-picking tip: pick the leaf, grasping only its outside and fold into a parcel, stings safely within. The top leaves were not stingy at all.

Appropriately, this was Be Nice to Nettles week (14-25 May), which aims to change our perception of nettles from an inconvenient weed to the healing nutritious herb it is.

What a strange world we live in, where nettles are not valued and other weeds with beneficial effects also get a bad press.

The nettles in question faced Vondle Park’s bandstand. You can glimpse its reflection in the picture above. (Don’t you just love an empty bandstand? Although abandonned, it promises spectacle).

Next to the bandstand is the Blue Treehouse, a cafe serving dishes such as fish pasta salad. Spaceship-like, it’s on two circular levels, surrounded by the leafy trees of May. A dj played grooves until it got dark.

We snacked a lot in Amsterdam, grazing from foodie delicatessens, or fuelling up with falafel or chips with mayonnaise, after dancing at the Bourbon Street jazz club or Cafe de Hortjes.

Twice we had an Indonesian rijsttafel, a Dutch-colonial rice feast with many dishes and most fiery.

Restaurant Kantjil & de Tijger (Spuistraat 291) was the one for me (see left below). I loved the use of tofu in the vegetarian variety. My big discovery was seroendeng, finely-shredded toasted coconut, a condiment I must have – now.

We travelled by rail and sail with Stenaline. Amazingly reasonable, it was £150 for two, including Liverpool Street-Amsterdam trains and a dinky cabin for one North Sea crossing.

We stayed on the Amstel Botel, moored excitingly right next to the Greenpeace boat (see below). This is on redeveloped docks with a free municipal ferry (carrying city-folk and their bikes) to the train station.

To paraphrase Eloise, oooooh I absolutely love Amsterdam.

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Posted in food

Tagged Amsterdam, Kantil & de Tijger, nettles, rijsttafel, seroendeng, stenaline

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).

Nettle soup

Posted on April 1, 2008 | 3 comments

Nettles piled on scales

On the first day of spring I resolved to pick wild nettles for soup. I’d read about it often enough.

Luckily I was with Chloë who pointed out we had just passed a clump of nettles. I can understand why I have never made made soup from them before. They were indistinguishable from the rest of the greenery – until I felt the familiar sting from pinching their fresh tops.

Wearing gloves, I filled a small plastic bag. Back home (see pic) I weighed the young nettles. My yield? Four ounces. Not bad for a first wild harvest

I melted organic butter (2oz) in a pan, and gently fried an organically-grown onion, sliced thinly.

Most recipes use boiled potatoes to thicken the soup, or flour. I chose protein-rich ground almonds (2oz). And why not some cooked chickpeas too?

I took the nettle tops I had washed (discarding any brown ones) to the onions softening in butter. I turned the mass of nettles over in the pan with a wooden spoon. As the green leaves touched the bottom of the pan, they felt the heat and wilted.

I added this nettle mixture to a bigger pan holding half a pint of salted water (for stock) with aforementioned almonds and chick peas, crushed .

I simmered the nettle soup for a few minutes (most of the other recipes said 10 – too long). Then, using the noisy hand-held liquidiser, I vroomed my way through the chickpeas and nettles, so they became more creamy.

The soup needed contrast so I fried sunflower seeds in a little oil, and they crisped up nicely. (Seeds whack-up a dish’s nutritional value. The next best thing to fresh, because, given the right condition (water/light), seeds can sprout new life.)

The nettles tasted amazing as if they had captured water in their strong cells and were bursting with lushness. This was wild food. It tasted different. Enlivening.