Nettle soup

"springtime in a bowl"

I think I'm going to steam through my little collection of River Cottage handbooks, because a lot of what they present is pretty useless to us here in Australia, so it will give me a chance to see if these are some books that I should weed - yes weed - because it could be said that the whole collection is about weeds and the associated philosopy of foraging and making do.

Today it's the turn of the beautiful British hedgerows as depicted here in the opening photographic spread of the book.

This particular volume is written by John Wright - an enthusiastic British foraging guru who often works with Hugh Fearnley-Whittingstall - the guiding light behind River Cottage and its mission to encourage people to grow and forage for their own food.

Unlike the Preserves volume in the collection this book is virtually all information about all the various edible plants you can find in the British hedgerows - and some of them can be found here, but not all. The recipe section - for this is a first recipe post is the very last and very small section at the back of the book. And it's first recipe is Nettle soup as shown below.

Just look at those beautiful blackberries on the cover. And, of course we have them here, although here they are a noxious weed and we spray them furiously. Not me in my garden, but this year they were sorry, dried up looking tiny things, and those that weren't were quickly snapped up by our voracious birds.

So nettle soup - which I'm pretty sure I have at least mentioned here and there - probably in a post on what to do with nettles, so forgive me if I am repeating myself.

In his introduction to nettle soup John Wright says:

"The keys to an excellent nettle soup are potato - to give body - and really good stock to give it spirit. Without these the wild food cynic's worst suspicions of boiled weeds will be confirmed."

Mind you not everyone agrees with that. Nigel even says: "Nettle soup, delicious as it is, can seem a bit of a cop-out" and "Grated nutmeg goes well with anything nettle based. I have learnt to go easy on the pepper." He has got a recipe online for Nettle and lettuce soup but alas with no picture. It's also not as simple as many in that, as well as the lettuce it contains peas, carrot , spring onion, and crème fraiche.

Felicity Cloake in her article on how to make The perfect nettle soup admits that she also added nutmeg:

"The nutmeg is all my own, because its sweet warmth goes as well with the slightly ferrous-flavoured nettle as it does with spinach"

She starts her article with this confession:

"The first time I made nettle soup, it was edible, but underwhelming, leading me to the conclusion that, though I was glad one could eat one of the few edible wild foods in abundance locally, I wouldn’t be rushing to repeat the experience while I could still afford to buy greens."

Which rang a bell with me, because I too have made nettle soup - just once. We have a little patch of nettles at the top of the drive and one year they were particularly lush and so I had a go - with the same - OK but not memorable - result.

So what do nettles taste like? Well according to Hugh Fearnley-Whittingstall:

"The flavour is irrefutably "green", somewhere between spinach, cabbage and broccoli, with a unique hint of nettliness: a sort of slight, earthy tingle in the mouth."

although Jane Grigson is a bit more circumspect:

"Not as good as spinach whatever some people claim, but not to be despised especially in a season of the year when greenery is scarce."

Which is rather damning with faint praise. And many make the point that really you should only use the first green tips of the plant.

So herewith a selection from here and there - some being very basic, and others more - shall we say - inventive: Hugh Fearnley Whittingstall - nettle soup - the head of the River Cottage team adds leeks, celery, garlic, rice and a dob of yoghurt; his colleague Gill Meller adds a poached egg for his Stinging nettle soup with poached eggs which makes it look rather gorgeous; Bacon and nettle soup from Joanne Mudhar/The Guardian; Donal Skehan presents a recipe for (Irish) Nettle soup by Declan Ryan on the SBS website, and Robin Harford of Eat Weeds gives us Creamed nettles which is not really a soup - it's really a sauce, but you could add stock and turn it into soup. The Italians have a nettle soup which is very similar to the basic forms but they also have Nettles stracciatella - as presented on the Milk & Honey Herbs website in which eggs beaten with cheese, basil and parsley are stirred through a chicken broth before the nettles are added at the end.

It's completely the wrong time of year to be writing about nettle soup - it being early autumn here - but that's the way of the foodie world here on the whole - most of the rest of the foodie world is in the northern hemisphere and completely out of sync.

People do other things with nettles of course. Ravioli are popular, and also on toast with various other things. So if you've got some nettles in your garden have a go next time they come up. Just wear gloves when you collect them and wash them. They only stop stinging when they are cooked.

YEARS GONE BY

March 7

2025 - Asparagus in Hong Kong

2024 - Baps - a guilty pleasure

2023 - Summer's end

2022 - Cooking with bark

2021 - Missing

2020 - Missing

2019 - Semolina

2018 - Nothing

2017 - Capsicums