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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

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.