Nettles. If you can't beat them, eat them!

The Veg Growers Group has now been meeting for six months and has gone from strength to strength. Each month we have a Vegetable of the Month, but choosing one for May was a challenge. For May is bang in the middle of the hungry gap. This year's crops are mere seedlings and small plants, only just going out into the garden. And stores from last year won't keep any longer. The potatoes are softened and have tentacle-like sprouts reaching out into the dark. Most of the pumpkins have been eaten or gone rotten and the onions aren't what they were.Having said that, I am already eating asparagus and rhubarb aplenty and I have beautiful fresh radishes, turnips and lettuces in the polytunnel. Jams and chutneys are always on tap and we have already taken honey from the bees this year. We have eggs coming out of our ears and can always treat ourselves to a chicken, guinea fowl or duck.

And if all that's not quite enough to keep us going, thankfully these days we have freezers. So even in the hungry gap visits to the supermarket are infrequent.

But there is another way to fill a hungry tum. For while we are still procrastinating over whether or not to put our tender young vegetables out into the big wide world of the veg plot, our native plants (also sometimes known as weeds) have been happily growing away for a couple of months.

There is one plant in particular which seems to do remarkably well on our fenland soil. I seem to be particularly adept at growing it. Fortunately it's an excellent plant for bugs such as aphids, which attract more garden-friendly predators such as ladybirds and hoverflies.

However there's a sting in the tail. For the humble stinging nettle crops up everywhere and takes persistence to control. As well as forming impenetrable patches, it bites when it's least expected, as you are peacefully going about your daily garden pottering.
But there is a solution. Bite back!
For nettles are indeed very tasty. They can be substituted into any recipe which uses spinach and have a pleasantly distinctive, almost nutty flavour.

233g of nettles

They should be harvested wearing thick gloves (and make sure your wrists aren't exposed, for however careful you are, you'll eventually get stung). Only young leaves should be used as the older, darker ones get a bit tough. Young leaves can be found when the plants first emerge early in the year, or taken from the top of each plant, but before the nettles come into flower. If you simply mow down your nettles though, you'll get a vigorous regrowth of fresh young leaves. This also leads those friendly insect predators to move to your vegetable plants to seek out aphids.

Now, you're probably thinking about hippy nettle tea and nettle soup. You may even have tried them and not liked them. All I can say is that I have four delicious recipes for you and urge you to give them a try. 

All nettle recipes start off with picking a stack of nettles. One portion is about half a plastic bag full. Wash the leaves thoroughly. I like to leave them in soak for a while with a little salt added to the water to help drive off the bugs. Don't be put off. This really is worth it.

After that, plunge the leaves into boiling water for 3 - 5 minutes, then drain and squeeze out the water, as you would with spinach - put them into a colander and press out the liquid with the back of a wooden spoon.

They are now completely safe to touch and can be used in any recipe.

The four recipes I have for you today are all carefully selected and adapted from the internet. They are: Garlicky Nettle Pesto; Nettle Gnocchi (or gnettle gnocchi if you prefer); Nettle Bread; and Sweet Potato and Nettle Soup. Give them a try, though you may have to mow your nettles first or wait till next spring.

Garlicky Nettle Pesto
Delicious as a light coating for pasta. If you make a double portion, you can freeze this in ice cube trays too. 

1/2 pound nettles
4 large garlic cloves, smashed
1/2 cup toasted pine nuts (I used walnuts, as that's what I had in)
1/2 teaspoon salt
Freshly ground pepper
1 tablespoon freshly squeezed lemon juice
1 1/4 cups extra virgin olive oil
1/3 cup grated Parmesan cheese (or cheap substitute)

Add the nettles to a large pot of boiling salted water stirring continuously, for 2 minutes.(This denatures their sting.) Drain into a colander and squeeze out the water. You’ll have about a cup of cooked, squished nettles.

Pasta tossed in garlicky nettle pesto.

Finely chop the garlic, pine nuts (or walnuts), salt and pepper to taste. You can do this in a food processor. Add the nettles, breaking them up as you drop them in, and the lemon juice and whizz until finely chopped. Gradually add the oil in a slow, steady stream, and process until smooth. Add the cheese, pulse briefly, and season to taste with additional salt, pepper, or lemon juice.

Stinging Nettle Gnocchi
Something a little different. Go on, give it a try! For this recipe you do need to use a floury potato (I used King Edwards), to avoid using too much flour in the recipe. It is possible to freeze the uncooked Stinging Nettle gnocchi (after they have been shaped and lightly dusted in flour to stop them sticking) for a week or two and then cooking them from frozen.

Ingredients

For the gnocchi:
600g potatoes, peeled and cut into even-sized pieces
150g well-washed nettle tops
2 egg yolks
Salt and pepper
120g plain flour

For the Sage Butter
75g butter
2 garlic cloves, peeled and finely sliced
12 sage leaves, finely shredded

A Little Extra Topping
50g freshly grated Parmesan cheese (or substitute)
Few chopped nuts of your choice

Boil the potatoes, drain and mash really well.

Put about a centimetre of water in the bottom of a large saucepan and bring to the boil. Add the nettle tops and cook for 5 minutes and then quickly cool them under cold running water. Tip into a sieve and squeeze out all the liquid with the back of a wooden spoon. Place in a food processor and chop finely then stir them into the potatoes.

Add the 2 egg yolks and season well.

The dough for the gnocchi

Add most of the flour and quickly mix it in. The secret of good gnocchi is to use sufficient flour to hold the mixture together but not too much that they become heavy. If the dough does not feel too sticky, break off a piece and roll it into a ball, drop it into boiling water to test. If after a few minutes it floats to the top without losing its shape, then do not add more flour. To shape the rest, break off individual pieces and roll them into a ball (about 2cm across) with floured hands, placing each finished one on a floured plate.

Nettle Gnocchi and Garlicky Nettle Pesto ready for the freezer

Drop half the gnocchi into a large saucepan of boiling water and cook until they have all floated to the surface. Leave them to cook for a further 10 seconds, then lift them out with a slotted spoon on to a hot plate lined with kitchen paper. Repeat with the remaining gnocchi.

While the gnocchi are cooking, place the butter, garlic and sage in a small saucepan and fry for 1-2 minutes. Divide the gnocchi between four plates, pour over the sauce and sprinkle over the parmesan and nuts. Serve immediately.

Instead of sage butter the gnocchi could be served with a simple tomato sauce or floated on a bowl of delicious soup, such as the recipe below.

Fragrant Nettle and Chive bread
Ingredients to make two small 1 lb loaves

100 g nettle leaves
 a pinch of freshly grated nutmeg
 2 tsp unsalted butter
 2 heaped tsp finely chopped
 fresh chives
 500 g strong white bread flour
 2 tsp salt
 7 g (1 sachet) fast-action dried yeast
 270 ml  water
 salt & freshly ground black pepper

First wash the nettles thoroughly, wearing rubber gloves. Add the nettles to a pan of boiling salted water and blanch for 2-3 minutes. Leave to cool, roughly chop the leaves, season with salt and freshly grated nutmeg, and set aside until later.

Melt the butter in another pan, then toss in the chives and stir. The aim is not to cook the chives, just to warm them – this really brings out the flavour. Put the chives aside.

Combine the flour, salt, chives and prepared nettles in a bowl. Then add the yeast and mix in. Make a well in the centre. Add the water to the well and bring together into a dough with your hands or with a spatula. Turn the dough out on to a clean kitchen surface and knead for 10 minutes.

Place the dough in a lightly oiled bowl, cover with a damp cloth and leave to prove until doubled in size
(60-90 mins). Turn the dough out on to a clean surface and knock it back. Divide into two equal portions, then shape it into loaves and place in two lightly oiled 1 lb loaf tins – or flowerpots. Cover and allow to prove again for 60—80 minutes. The loaves should come to just below the rims of the tins or have increased by two-thirds.

Preheat the oven to 220°C (425°F/Gas 7) and put a roasting tray in the bottom. When ready to bake, place the loaves in the oven and steam by adding cold water to the tray. After 20 minutes remove the loaves from the tins, then return them to the oven and cook for a further eight minutes, until golden-topped and the base of the loaf sounds hollow when tapped.

Sweet Potato, Nettle and Chickpea Soup

This is a soup with substance, a filling bowlful of hearty satisfaction. Pepped up with the warmth of some aromatic spices it is perfect for those evenings when the sun dips a little too fast leaving the seven o’clock air with a surprising, biting chill.

Ingredients
2 large sweet potatoes, peeled and diced
A baking potato, peeled and diced
Two onions, sliced
As much garlic as you wish
Spices: cumin, cinnamon, coriander, cloves, star anise – take your pick
Lots of fresh nettle tops
A tin of chickpeas
Vegetable stock, about 3 pints

Fry off your chosen spices in a little oil until they in turn start to release their oils. The smell will change, just take care not to burn them else you will add a bitter note to the soup. Crush them in a pestle and mortar then add the garlic.

Fry the onion until soft then add the potato (both sweet and regular). Give it a little colour then add the spices and garlic before covering with stock. Leave to simmer until the potatoes are cooked then blend and pass through a sieve to remove and rogue crunchy spices.

Wash and pick over the nettles. Cook in plenty of rapidly boiling, salted water then leave to drain in a colander or sieve. Chop the nettles then add to the soup along with a can of drained chickpeas. Heat through and serve with nettle bread or gnocchi.

Some of the Veg Group enjoying a nettle feast.
Quote of the night "It looks worse than it tastes"!!!
Many were more positive though.



Butternutty Squash Soup

Just a quickie.
That butternut squash which started to  turn after I accidentally knocked off the stalk...

Well I took a risk on a rather unusual recipe from Hugh F-W - Butter Nut and Nut Butter Soup.
The Nut Butter refers to Peanut Butter. I really wasn't sure, but I went ahead and ended up with a very, very tasty soup indeed.
For the full recipe, look here.

Pumpkin Bakery

A pumpkin goes a long way... and I've still got several in storage.
Hopefully they'll last a while, but every now and then one needs using up.

I don't understand why, but when harvesting they need a good piece of stalk left on. The other day I accidentally knocked the top off a butternut and, within a couple of days, it began to go.

Pumpkin soup is scrummy, warm and delicious. I usually go for a spiced up recipe. Despite each pumpkin leading to gallons of soup, it still seems to disappear quite quickly. But pumpkin has a strange sweetness to it too. This is most exploited in America in the form of pumpkin pie - something I've not yet tried cooking. The condensed milk always sounds just a bit too sickly!

Pumpkin makes a good bread too, (try this recipe for orangey pumpkin bread - it actually uses a whole orange blitzed up and tastes gorgeous - though mine came out more like a cake than a moist bread) but here I want to tell you about pumpkin cake. I actually made it about ten days ago and it's all gone now, but I've completely forgotten where the recipe came from - which is absolutely no use to you! However, recipes are widely available and they are much of a muchness. All I can say is to give one of them a go. I did and I wasn't disappointed.

Dry ingredients at the ready.

This cake mix did well to make it through to the baking stage!
I certainly enjoyed licking the bowl.

Voila!

A couple of hints
1. This recipe called for pumpkin puree (canned) but I just cooked up some pumpkin and ran it through the food processor. Inexplicably, though, I got less weight of puree out than the pumpkin that I put in. Had I not run out of pumpkin because of this, a pumpkin pie may actually have materialised too.
2. Read the reviews after the recipes - I searched for a frosted icing recipe and the one I settled on came out way too runny and was almost unsaveable. The first review told me this, had I looked at it!

 

Good, hearty cooking.

Sausage, braised red cabbage, leeky mashed potato.
Simple, tasty, satisfying.
This meal seems to encapsulate all that we are trying to achieve
here on the smallholding.

I've just been searching out recipes for the Cavolo Nero which is looking so enticing in the veg patch at the moment and I came across this inspiring piece of writing.

It’s not often that we serve up peasants meals  in this modern high flying twenty first century that we find ourselves living in now. No it’s more about weekday meals made from duck breast, fillet of beef and free range chickens, how disillusioned are we? I think we have lost appreciation for good hearty meals cooked with love and understanding, recipes like this one. Throw in perhaps a couple of ingredients from our own gardens, and then, only then,will I think we are heading back in the right direction of appreciating good food cooked well.
It breaks my heart when you see everyone trying to recreate restaurant meals at home to eat everyday. I think it’s wrong and we are making out as if good old fashioned home cooking is something of the past,but it isn’t and it’s got to come back and deserves a place at our table . Restaurant meals should be for those special occasions when we have worked hard to save the pennies  and can really appreciate its value.

For more, look here, but don't forget to come back to my blog!

The quote above sums up better than I could ever express just how I felt and what I thought when I made this meal. It doesn't look much, but this is the tastiest meal I've had in a long, long time. Sausage from our own pig, braised red cabbage and mashed potato with leek.
A little sugar and red wine vinegar in the red cabbage were the only ingredients which didn't come straight from the smallholding. This is not unusual these days, but what made this meal so special was that it somehow captured the spirit of what we are trying to achieve here.

Here's the recipe, so to speak. Sorry if it's not very precise, it's just the way I cook. I'm not trying to be a recipe website.
You can easily find others, probably just as good, on the interweb.

One or two sausages per person, preferably from your own pig! If not, buy the best you can get. It really will be worth it.
Fry slowly till evenly browned all over. A good quality sausage shouldn't need oil or fat for frying.

Braised Red Cabbage - this will make loads, at least enough for a family. It keeps well in the fridge for the next day and the flavours develop.
Pick one small red cabbage, trim, wash and slice thinly.
Slice and lightly fry between one and three onions - depends on size of onions and how much you like onion. I prefer red for this recipe. Colour and sweetness goes well with the red cabbage.
Add in a glug of red wine vinegar (I used some old sherry vinegar as I'd run out), one or 2 spoonfuls of brown sugar (doesn't really matter what sort), all the cabbage and a chopped up cooking apple.
Then some spices. Here you can add your own stamp. I used about a teaspoon of ground allspice and the same of nutmeg. Finally add about 100ml of stock and bring to the boil.
Simmer for at least an hour, so that all the liquid cooks off. If necessary, add more liquid - water is fine.
Taste towards the end and add whatever you like - salt, pepper, more spices...

Mashed potato and leeks
Make mashed potatoes - I'm not telling you how to do this!
Pick a couple of leeks from the plot, trim, wash and lightly fry with a couple of cloves of garlic, crushed. Increase or decrease this depending on how much you like garlic.
When everything's cooked, simply mix it all together. I like to add a good sprinkle of pepper to zing it up a little. 

The timings on the three components of this meal are all very loose so you don't end up rushing to get everything done in a couple of minutes at the end.

So there you have it. A simple, delicious, tasty meal made from ingredients which are all ready at the same time of year.
And back to that quote about hearty home cooking compared to restaurant meals. On a slightly different tack, I could rant for pages on the subject of processed foods and ready meals. But I won't. If you understand what I mean about good, hearty cooking, I'll be preaching to the converted.

Thick-billed Pork Burgers

Gratuitous use of the oil painting setting on my photo software.

If you don't want to see graphic images of a butchery nature, please close your eyes and scroll down enough to get past the next picture!  (Seriously)

GOARY, but strangely fascinating.
If you're going to eat an animal,
I firmly believe you should be able to look it in the face.

The title of this post reflects the total panic which reigned last Friday.

In fact this post is a strange mixture of butchery, burger-making and birding. A strange mixture which I have chosen to make my life.

For two weekends ago our last piglet went off, leaving us with just Daisy.

Trailer in position, ready for loading

 

Daisy: The survivor

I was planning on keeping this one till after Christmas, mainly because of shortage of freezer space. But when someone expressed an interest in buying half of her for bacon / gammons / hams, I decided that I could just about manage the other half. She was growing very quickly anyway. Could be something to do with a certain lady upping the pigs' rations without telling me! Anyway, she (the piglet, not my lady!) spent her last month on a diet, topped up with oodles of apple pulp from our cider making activities. At this time of year we get many donations of windfalls for the pigs - all most welcome.

So, back to that total panic on Friday. As usual I had picked up the pig from my butchers on Thursday afternoon. Half had gone off to a happy customer and the rest was for me to sort out. We still had quite a lot of pork joints left in the freezers, which really were bulging with the summer's harvest, so I decided to get the majority of our half pig turned into mince. This gave me the opportunity to ask the butcher to take out the whole tenderloin - something of a luxury.

And so it was that, on Friday morning, I set about the task of turning half a pig into pork burgers. I had an ambitious plan to make at least half a dozen varieties, and an even more ambitious plan to somehow find room in the freezers!

I set about peeling, chopping, cooking, measuring, mixing and shaping. First came Red Pepper, Chili and Tomato burgers, then Curried Potato burgers. All the ingredients (bar some of the spices) came from the garden. Fortunately, I think, I tried one of the chillis before committing them into the mixture. Just the tiniest piece had my tongue tingling for the next hour!
Everything took time, but I carried on through the morning and by lunchtime I had knocked out a batch of Thai style pork burgers too.

Red Pepper, Chilli and Tomato pork burgers

I was doing OK, though I was a bit worried about the tiny amount of space left in the freezers. I would surely need to take an hour out of burger making just to reorganise the freezers and make some space. I started the next batch - Fennel, Apple and Coriander - when suddenly, and most inconveniently, the pager wailed into action.

THICK-BILLED WARBLER

... on Shetland Mainland!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

That was it. My industrious day at home was turned upside down. The phone started ringing and I went into blind panic, running around like a headless chicken. I hastily worked out my options and booked a flight from Aberdeen. My phone was then pretty much non-stop for the next couple of hours - all while I was now desperately attempting to get the last two batches of burgers made. This might have been a little bit easier if it weren't for the fact that I have to go outside to get any form of acceptable signal here.

I don't quite know how I did it, but by the evening the burgers were done, in the freezers and I was getting ready to drive to York, where I would meet up with a fellow birder and head northwards towards Aberdeen airport, via Tebay where we would pick up another two mad souls.

I should say that Sue and I were due to be entertaining on Saturday evening. Fortunately everybody we know has come to expect this type of spontaneous behaviour from me at this time of year.

If all went to plan, while Sue was cooking and entertaining I would be getting on the overnight ferry from Shetland back to Aberdeen, hopefully having seen the bird.

And that last phrase most certainly could not be taken for granted. For, of the four previous Thick-billed Warblers to be found in Britain, none had been twitchable on the second day. Add to that the fact that I'd already made two unsuccessful trips to Ireland during the previous week, and you will see why us twitchers sometimes get a little twitchy!

I had intended this blog post to be exclusively about burger making, but as usual my best laid plans have been interrupted by a bird. So here's my account of the twitch. I'm afraid there are no photos - I wanted to avoid having to check any luggage onto the plane so the camera had to stay at home.

I won't describe the drive up to Aberdeen - it takes a long time but I was at least able to get a bit of sleep. I did my fair share of staying awake to keep the driver going too.
We arrived at the multi-storey car park at the ferry terminal at about 6.30am. The plan was to get a taxi from there to the airport, which we had booked en route, so that we would be able to get straight off the ferry and into the car when we returned. However, £45 for parking just over 24 hours seemed like a rip off so we cancelled the taxi ( for which they seemed to have no record of the booking anyway!) and drove to the airport car park. The one small benefit of booking last minute is that you always have to buy the expensive (but exchangeable) tickets, which gives the perfect opportunity to lower the tone in the executive lounge! I hit the espresso coffee machine and the cakes while Danny Boy started his celebrations a little early!
But this was nothing compared to when the north-eastern twitchers arrived. They did their best to recoup their air fare in cakes, biscuits and miniature drinks cans! It was very good to see so many familiar faces. It's a funny old game is twitching. You meet the same group of people from all over the country, but you never know where or when you will all meet up next. It is usually on a plane or a boat though.
Everybody was excited, though I have to admit I was slightly in fear of a third major dip in a row. So it was with relief that we received a phone call before boarding the plane that the bird was still present.
The night before it had been seen by quite a few birders already on Shetland, but apparently most views had only been of the bird in flight. Although Thick-billed Warbler is large and distinctive as far as little brown jobs go, it's still not ideal to see any lbj only in flight. We also knew that the bird was skulking in an oat crop and that no access to the crop was being allowed. So we most certainly were not counting our chickens... or our TBWs for that matter!

As we landed it was a race to get off the plane, through the airport and into our hire car, before Dan raced the few miles to Geosetter. We left the car parked as sensibly as we could and approached the field where maybe thirty or forty birders were already looking to get views of the bird.
For maybe an hour or so there was nothing. This sure would be a major hit to take if we had made it all the way here and failed to see the bird, especially knowing that it was in the field in front of us. We had been told in no uncertain terms that the farmer would not allow anyone to access the field so, having waited patiently, Plan B was put into action. As soon as the drizzle stopped and the sun almost came out, a recording of Thick-billed Warbler was played and OOOMF!! It wasn't long at all before the bird briefly flew above the oats towards its perceived fellow lost soul. It was fairly obvious what it was - it couldn't really be anything else, but a better view would most certainly be appreciated.

We then stood for a further 90 minutes with nothing to entertain us apart from an occasional flight over the oat crop by a blackcap and a couple of diminutive yellow-browed warblers flitting around. This really was very frustrating indeed.

But then the rather brash, self-appointed organiser of twitches on Shetland appeared having spoken to the farmer. He had permission for two people to walk through the field.
An anticipatory crowd headed up to the far end of the field and waited with bated breath. It wasn't too long before the quarry was flushed out and again made a short flight over the crop.
This happened a few more times, until I had what I refer to as a 'jigsaw tick'. I had seen enough bits of the bird on my various views to piece the whole thing together. The bird did at one stage leave the field, only to dive into the thick willow growth which filled the adjacent burn. Unfortunately the crowd was too twitchy and 'edged' forward too impatiently, which resulted in the bird heading straight back into the field!

Anyway, to cut a long story short, with patience we eventually got extended views of the Thick-billed Warbler in flight and in the binoculars. The stubby, thick bill, the open facial expression and beady eye and the long, graduated tail all combined to make it a most distinctive bird, even with only flight views.
It would have been nice to explore a little more of Shetland and to see some more of its birds, but this bird was a skulker which had led us a merry dance all day and before we knew it we had to head back to the ferry terminal in Lerwick. There was just time to burn my tongue on a hastily consumed fish and chips in the harbour before we boarded the ferry and began washing our meal down with a few celebratory drinks. Some were thirstier than others, Dan!!!

So that was it, from burgers in a fenland farmhouse kitchen to a thick-billed warbler in a far-flung corner of Britain.