Just a wee break from the whole politics thing, least until I get some more Wendy orientated material :twisted: .  No, today my focus is far more meal-orientated … unless you’re one of those meat and two veg people in which case this is more of a starter-orientated post. 

Some time ago someone, might’ve been me might’ve been the mrs put a recipe for nettle soup on the fridge, you know the sort.  The type you get in the ‘lifestyle’ section of the paper that no-one every reads, but everyone will probably flick through at some point, it’s obvious too that the newspaper people don’t expect anyone to read that particular piece of pulp either otherwise they wouldn’t be putting recipes for nettle soup in them in the middle of bloody winter!

Anyway, for nettle soup you’re going to need:

one pair of gloves
300g of nettles
4 Medium potatoes washed and chopped
1 medium onion pealed and chopped
a dash of tobasco
60g butter
1.5litres of chicken or veg stock

First up you’re going to need to put on your gloves, or if you’re feeling brave, a large pile of dock leaves to soothe away those stings.

One glove’ll do, but you know, two’s better

Next you need to pick the nettles.  300g is around about a supermarket sized bag worth and you only really want the tender top bits, the stalk towards the base becomes a bit more fibrous and whilst it may be a plausible alternative to dental floss it’s not something you want your dinner guests to be picking out of their teeth!  So top parts only!

300grams worth of nettles

Now that you’ve got your nettles you need to blanch them by plunging them into a large pan of boiling water for about a minute … use a wooden spoon to press them under as boiling water tends to scald, even through gloves!

You need to take the nettles out and run them under cold water, a colander in conjunction with a cold water tap is good for this … like you didn’t already know that?!

Blanched nettles – they go a vibrant green

You can put them aside for now.

Next you need to gently fry your chopped onions in the butter until soft (a few minutes will do), before adding the chunks of potato and cooking a bit longer.  After say 5 minutes or so chuck in the nettles – they’re safe to handle now – add the stock, and a splash of tabasco.  A pinch of salt and a dash of pepper never did any harm either at this point.

Boil this all up for a bit, about 15 – 20 minutes should do it, giving it an occasional stir.  If you’ve got a hand blender, stick it in the pan and blend it until it’s lumpless, if you don’t have a hand blender use the traditional variety and add a hand blender to your shopping / christmas / birthday list … they’re great!

You should, by now, have something that looks like this:

snot anyone?!

Serve with some nice bread and a splash of cream for an unusual and tasty treat.  Once you get past it’s green-ness it’s actually pretty splendid!