Spring Leaves 2 Nettles (Vegetarian recipe)

Round my way the nettles are springing up, about 4-5 inches long and as green as a very green thing - which is what they are... Time for some cautious foraging with gardening gloves, long sleeves, and scissors.
Snip off the top half of the young nettles (or about one third, later on in the year) leaving the lower stem and leaves. Plastic carrier bags are OK to carry them in, providing they are not left sitting in them too long. Calculate quantities as if the leaves were liquid.

Nettle Risotto is a dish from the Abruzzo, the mountainous spine of Italy, a region of poor soil, harsh winters and an inventive local cuisine. To me it has the pure taste of spring: green herbs and a little fresh cream from the first milking to make it really luxurious. It’s vegetarian.

• 2 litres of young, fresh nettles
• 1 large onion, chopped
• 30 g butter
• 1 litre good vegetable stock
• 1 glass white wine or fino sherry. Bramble or a rich dandelion wine is good for this.  
• 300 g short-grain rice. Arborio is best
• 3 tbsp cream
• Salt
• Black pepper
• Fresh chives or parsley, chopped
• 40 g grated parmesan cheese

Fill the sink or a washing bowl with cold water. Wearing rubber gloves, submerge the nettles. Wash thoroughly, changing the water once or twice.

Strip the leaves from the stalks. Discard stalks.

Shake excess water from leaves, place in a pan with a pinch of salt, and cook briskly until leaves are soft and quantity has reduced.

Drain liquid from nettles into the vegetable stock.

Melt butter in a heavy-bottomed pan. Add the chopped onion. Soften over low heat until translucent.

Press the last drops of liquid out of the nettles into the stock. Transfer the stock to a saucepan and simmer.

Chop the drained nettles, add them to the onion, and cook for one minute on a low heat, stirring constantly.

Add the rice to the onion and nettle. Cook on a low heat until the edges of the rice grains begin to turn pearly.

Stir in the wine.

Ladle enough liquid from the stock pan onto the rice to just cover it. Stir gently. As the rice absorbs the stock, keep adding a ladleful at a time. You need to stir the rice enough to prevent sticking, but not so much you break the rice grains.

When all the liquid has been absorbed the rice will be plump and fluffy. Remove from heat. Stir in the cream. Sprinkle with black pepper, the chopped green herbs, and the parmesan.

Traditionally, a risotto ‘rests’ for a minute after this before it is served.

Serves 4.

Spring leaves part 1

Well, all of a sudden it's spring - trees in full blossom, and all the new green leaves popping up all of a sudden.


The blossom came more or less over night - we had a really sunny day last week, and the branches went from little knobbly lumps of bud to full-blown flowers from one day to the next.


With luck we won't get another frost, which should mean a good autumn for fruit forage. 2010 was excellent, due to a cold winter before the sap rose and no frost later to kill the buds. This winter had plenty of cold, which fruit trees like, so fingers crossed for a good vintage 2011. In the mean time, pick leaves.


Dandelions are one of the best forage plants: there's no shortage of them. Indeed, gardeners often go to great lengths to get rid of them: futile lengths, as the plants have amazing powers of regeneration, even from the tiniest fragments of root. But why bother? Every bit of the dandelion  (except the stalk, which is full of bitter latex) is good to eat or brew.


Here's a recipe to do right now. I wrote a meat-eating version for my Wild Brews column in Smallholder magazine, but not sure if it's going in or not (if it doesn't, I'll post it here sometime).


This is a no-animal-produce version, suitable for all.

Dandelion Salad (serves 2-4)

• Two full handfuls of young dandelion leaves
• Two handfuls of sunflower seeds 
• Half a cucumber
• Lemon juice 
• Salt and freshly ground black pepper to taste

Lay the sunflower seeds of a sheet of foil or baking paper and place under a hot grill, shaking from time to time so the seeds are evenly toasted

Wash dandelion leaves thoroughly in cold water. Drain the leaves, spin dry in a salad spinner, or wrap in a clean dry tea cloth and shake dry, or pat dry.

Wash and chop the cucumber.

Roughly chop the dandelion leaves.

Mix the leaves, cucumber and toasted seeds and toss together with lemon juice. Season with salt and black pepper.

This makes a good starter or side-salad for Risotto alle Ortiche, which uses another good foraging stalwart: nettles. Recipes coming up soon. Enjoy your forage. :)

Signs of Spring

Crocuses, lots of snowdrops still (saw the first on January 2nd and they are still going) and daffs not open yet, little knobs of blossom budding along the blackthorn twigs and just about to break.... but the real sign of spring is that my kitchen is now warm enough for breadmaking to happen quickly and enjoyably. I made a batch last week and it rose so quickly I could feel it under my fingers. Whereas the last few batches I've baked had to be planned over two days to allow the dough to rise overnight - and even then, one lot was a bit flat and heavy. This batch is fine - granary loaves, poppy-seed rolls, rye bread and some apricot buns.

Risotto with Nettles by Anna Del Conte

This is a terrific book - a memoir with recipes - which I noticed at my local library (and here's a cheer for local libraries - defend them against the cuts!) the day after I had written my Wild Brews column for Smallholder's April edition.

The thing is, my column was mainly about nettles, including a recipe for Risotto Alle Ortiche - Nettle risotto. That's why her title kind of hit me in the eye as I came up the stairs to the upper library and saw her book displayed.

My recipe version is a little different from hers though, mainly in the addition of a glass of wine to the rice at the translucent stage, and being slightly less buttery. I learnt mine in the Abruzzo, whereas hers comes from further north, in Piedmonte: that may account for it as pasturage is poorer further south.

Foraging in the fields, and foraging in libraries, bookshops and on my own over-crowded shelves are not disimilar activities.

Marmalade

Not foraged, unless you live (as I once did) within reach of orange and lemon trees. [When I first arrived in Naples I was amazed by orange and lemon trees on balconies high above the narrow stony streets - they looked unreal to me, unnaturally bright like Christmas decorations, especially as they fruit in winter].

This is a slow recipe: I did it over two days.

I used less sugar than most recipes call for, partly because the Beloved is diabetic, and partly because I find a lot of marmalades just too sweet to bear. To aid setting I've replaced some of the sugar called for with apple pectin and with apple flesh.

You need:

a very large saucepan - enamelled or stainless steel
a sharp knife
a sieve (preferably metal, as it may get hot)
a juicer
a large square of muslin
a measuring jug
wooden spoons
a saucer
6 clean jars with lids
a ladle

12 seville oranges
2 lemons
1 cooking apple
350 g cane sugar
250 g dark demarara sugar
125 ml Apple Pectin (I used Certo - there are other makes)
1 campden tablet

Scrub the oranges and lemons.
Peel finely, avoiding the pith. Chop the peel - I like it fairly chunky - and put into the saucepan.
Line the sieve with the muslin and put it over the measuring jug.
Cut the oranges and lemons in half, and squeeze them into the jug. The muslin will catch any bits of pith and the pips.
Scrape the flesh out of the squeezed halves, making sure you pick out the pips, and put them into the saucepan with the peel. Put the discarded pithy halves into the muslin.
Measure the juice and make up the quantity to 4 litres. Put into the saucepan.
Tie the corners of the muslin together firmly to hold the pith and pips. Put into the saucepan.
Bring the liquid to the boil, and simmer until the liquid is reduced to about two-thirds and the peel is soft and translucent. This took me about 1 hour and 45 minutes.

I then left it over night, with the bag in it... not really planned (just it was late and I was tired), but it seems to have done it no harm.

In the meantime, clean your marmalade jars in hot water. I added a campden tablet, which is used for sterilising wine-making equipment, but hot water and washing up liquid works ok. Rinse thoroughly. Air dry rather than wiping - I put them under the unlighted grill, as it gets warm while I'm boiling the mix on top of the cooker.

Then:

Put the saucer in the fridge (or in the freezer if you're in a hurry)
Lift out the muslin bag and rest it to cool in the sieve over the saucepan.
When the bag has cooled, squeeze and press and bash as much jelly-like essence and gooey juice as you possibly can out of it into the saucepan. I used the wooden spoon for this, and also a marmalade jar (pressing the bottom of it onto the bag) and finally pressed it between two bowls, and at last in my fists.

Peel and core the apple. Chop the flesh into small pieces, removing pips and core-y bits.
Add the apple flesh to the saucepan.
Now return the saucepan to the heat and stir in the sugars and the apple pectin. Bring to a fast boil. If the surface gets frothy, scoop the froth off with a spoon.

When the marmalade begins to bubble gloopily, test it ever 5 or 10 minutes to see whether it is ready. You do this by dropping a little bit onto the cold saucer.

If the marmalade's ready, it will become firm as it cools and, when you touch it, wrinkly. If it is overdone, it will crystalise - that's a sign of far too much sugar. If it's not ready yet, it will remain runny. 

When done, ladle into the clean warm jars and leave to cool. Carefully - few things are as hot as hot marmalade. Seal and label the jars.

The demarara sugar gives this a nice, dark rich taste and you should be able to taste the orange and the lemon peel.

The whole house smells like the bells of St Clements.

Out and About

A longish walk yesterday around Oxnead to see the snowdrops, Brampton, over the water meadows by Buxton and along the railway path to Coltishall. Unusually I carried no forage bag (I should do always, if only to pick up litter) but I did as always have my eyes peeled. Too early just yet for bramble tips or new nettles, but they are on their way. (We are currently drinking 4 year old bramble wine, and very fine it is too: I plan to make lots this spring).
Plenty of birdlife about. Egyptian geese on the water meadows. Many robins calling, and along the railway path there were bluetits on every third or fourth tree. Coming along we saw a smallish brown raptor drop out of a tree on our left and disappear into the hedge on the right, after which we heard a loud cuck cuck cuck of a bird complaining and saw the raptor fly into a copse in the field, quickly followed by the sight of a lot of small birds flying out of the copse as fast as they could in all directions. Looking it up on the RSPB website it seems to be either a female sparrowhawk (they are brown, but have a barred tail which I didn't spot), maybe a merlin... I wish birds had labels, or pulled little banners behind them announcing their names. The birds think it is spring, and the snowdrops do as well.
Making marmalade.