Foraging: wild nettle pesto and nettle grain salad

Ian (who is due the credit for all our cooking-related adventures), based the recipe on one which was published in BBC Good Food Magazine but with a couple of modifications to account for the fact that anyone who spends an hour in the kitchen trying to cut leaves of nettle plants while wearing gardening gloves, is not going to throw away some of them because it turns out they've collected 50g more than the recipe calls for. 

Foraging for nettles
There's not too much to say on this really, it's a case of find a patch of nettles pick them!  However, there are a few things to bear in mind.  First, younger leaves are better than old- the older leaves tend to be a lit tougher and fibrous.  Second, try and find a foraging patch that's been exposed to as little pollution as possible, the main things here being cars and passing dogs.  Having said that we did our initial foraging behind an industrial estate by our house and it was fine- you will wash the leaves and boil them before eating.  Finally, wear gloves!

 

Recipe:  Wild Nettle Pesto

150ml oil (we use rapeseed)

Small handful of basil leaves, chopped

Approximately 150g young nettles, chopped (weigh the leaves when they have been removed from the stalks, then wash). As mentioned above, we used exactly the amount we collected, I think around 200g.

50g Pine nuts (of half pine nuts/half sunflower seeds)


Somewhere under all the basil is spirelli pasta with prawns

We were  running low on pine nuts so we used half pine nuts and half sunflower seeds- toasting both together before bashing them in the pestle and mortar.  This worked well. Sunflower seeds aren't quite as soft as pine nuts but when lightly toasted they take on a lovely slightly nutty flavour which works well in this pesto.

50g Parmesan

1 garlic clove, finely chopped

1/2 lemon, zest and a juice

(1) gently toast the pine nuts (and sunflower seeds, if using) in a dry pan.
(2) bring a large pan of water to the boil, drop in the nettle leaves and boil for 2 minutes.  Run under cold water to cool quickly and stop the cooking process.  Squeeze out as much liquid as possible (they won't sting!) and roughly chop.
(3)add the nettles, parmesan, garlic (raw), pine nuts/seeds and lemon zest to a food processor aand blitz to rough paste, add almost all of the oil to loosen together with the lemon juice.
(4) add to clean, sterilised jar and top with the remainder of the oil.
will keep in the fridge for 2-3 weeks.




Recipe:  nettle grain salad

In this recipe, we replaced spinach with nettles (washed as above to remove the stings) in a wild rice salad.