I made the first nettle soup of the year at the weekend and I thought I'd share our particularly delicious recipe that we make every year. It's great eaten as a soup for a lunch or starter, as well, but we eat it as a main course with the addition of Eiernockerl - a dish from my husband's Austrian heritage. It's basically a type of very basic flour dough, in tiny pieces not unlike crude pasta or dumplings, which are boiled, strained and fried with beaten egg. Really tasty with all kinds of accompaniments and additions and particularly with the nettle soup, which loves egg.
In Vivien Weise's book "Cooking Weeds", a survey is quoted from a German government study of wild foods, which found that the nutrition profile of weeds is much greater than many of our common vegetables. For example, iron in nettles is 7.8(mg/100g edible part) and it's 4.1 in spinach, the highest rated garden vegetable. Chickweed is rated 8.4! Our daily requirement is 13-18. Calcium in nettles is 630 and in curly kale, the highest rated garden veg., it's 212. Our daily requirement is 800.
So, get the tough gloves on and get out to your closest nettle patch! Choose carefully and pick one away from roads and any polluted sources and unsprayed places if possible. Pick only the top 4-6 leaves approx., and don't pick them late in the year when they've got stringy seed bits and get really tough and bitter.By regularly picking over a patch, you can cultivate a sustainable source of tender shoots for many months. we've never tested how long you can keep it going, properly, because the garden veggies take over and we forget all about the humble nettle for another year! Revel and bask in your free organic green goodness...
Nettle Soup (8-10 portions)
3/4 of a plastic carrier bag, approx of nettle tops, rinsed
2 onions, diced
2 potatoes, peeled, diced
2 carrots, diced
2 stalks celery, diced
1/4 - 1/3 of a large swede, diced
4 cloves garlic, chopped/crushed
2 pts veggie stock
2 tbsp oil
1. Fry the onion, potatoes, carrots, swede, celery until soft. Add garlic. Fry another minute. Add in the stock and all the nettles. PAck them all in, pushing down, add more water if necessary to cover them
2. Bring to boil and simmer until nettles are tender - around 15 mins or so. Season well and blend to a thick soup.
Eier Nockerl (4-6 portions)
400g plain flour
salt
1-2 eggs
ca. 250 ml milk or water
2 (or more) eggs and oil to fry
1. Mix ingredients in a bowl to a thick stiff batter/dough. It should be very thick and difficult to pour.
2. Put on a big pot of boiling salted water.
3. Pour/scrape Nockerl mixture onto a bread board.
4. Hold bread board over the simmering water at an angle. Using a table knife, 'cut' bits about 2-3 cms long and 1 cm wide off the dough/batter and scrape into water. Work fast, it should be quick.
5. They are ready when they all rise to the top of the pot of water. It only takes 5 mins or so.
6. Drain.
7. Heat a frying pan with some oil. Add drained Nockerl and beaten eggs. Stir over a gentle heat until eggs are set.
8 Serve immediately with the hot nettle soup spooned over it.
