Rural Life

Nettle Soup

Well we are past the equinox and finally days are longer than nights and the sun is starting to have some real power in it, so Spring is definitely here.  While it brings good things (blossom, swallows and swifts, butterflies, longer days), it does mean that the weeds start to wake up as well, and I will soon lose part of the garden to goose grass if previous years are anything to go by.

I have wrought revenge on one weed (do it to them before they do it to you?) by eating it, and jolly good it was too!  I have tried making nettle soup before, but have found it comes out watery and rather uninspiring unless you are on a very serious diet or completely skint, but this time I ignored the advice of local cooks and did my own recipe and jolly good it was too.  So in the interests of helping people keep down but still maintain their nettle stocks (spraying is not the way forward as nettles are home to many nice butterflies when they are in egg and caterpillar form), I share my nettle soup with the world - or those bits that read blogs anyway.

Ingredients

• 1 or two medium potatoes, peeled and cubed
• The green bits of a leek or two you were going to throw away, but are still too good for the compost heap - at least a good heaped tablespoon
• 10 or 12 sorrel leaves, roughly de-ribbed (just the central rib - one set of strings too many otherwise)
• a full salad spinner bowl of nettle tops - the last 4 to 6 leaves
• stock - I used a chicken stock cube and the cooking water from the best bits of the leeks I cooked for another dish (leeks wrapped in best ham and baked in a goat's cheese sauce with crunch topping - yum)
• seasoning to taste

Method:

1. Put the potato cubes and the leek bits in a big saucepan with a knob of butter and a spoon of olive oil and heat gently to get them a bit cooked and coated with the fats so they don't stick to the pan
2. Gradually add handfuls of sorrel leaves and nettle tops and move them around the pan so they wilt in the oil - the sorrel will go a bit muddy coloured but the nettles will go a nice rich dark green
3. Add sufficient stock to only just cover the greens - add too much and you end up with washing up water in my opinion - and simmer until the potatoes are done
4. Whizz to get a nice smooth consistency and season to taste
5. To serve, pour in a bowl and add a swirl of cream - I had got to the end of the pot so I did Jackson Pollock cream which isn't so pretty - and serve with garlic croutons and crusty bread

It may turn your pee green but that wears off, just make sure you don't include too much other garden produce with your nettles (bugs, grass, other weeds, butterfly eggs) so wash your nettle tops carefully while wearing rubber gloves - for obvious reasons.

Here is our lunch today!

 

Hints of spring

Last weekend I was out in the garden with the camera, looking for hints of spring and things for dinner.  Sadly the broad beans still haven't come up (well I did only sow them a couple of weeks ago now), but there were lots of other lovely things.  Perhaps one of the happiest signs that spring is on her way are the crocuses that surround the Quince tree - I can't tell if there are more this year but they were lovely last weekend (today they are pretty well over).

 

With spring on the way, the last of the root vegetables need to be lifted and eaten before they think about flowering.  I am giving the parsnips another day or two, but last week I had got some nice bits of stewing pork, so thought it was time the salsify was lifted.  With roots, you can never tell how good the crop is until it is in your basket.  There were some lovely thick and non-branching roots, but they were in the minority.  Most were badly forked.  However they were delicious, so who cares about how pretty they were?

 

We decided a while back that we wanted a couple of apple trees, but with the dry year last year and then the harsh winter, we hadn't done anything about it.  However as our Gamm Vert discount voucher was about to expire, we went tree shopping and got one of the two desired trees.  Reine de Reinette apples inspire the same level of passion here in France as Coxes Orange Pippins do in Kent.  I don't think it works to try to import our favourite apple varieties to France - there is a reason why they do well in Kent, and there is a reason why French apples do well in France - they are right for the conditions.  We have our Reine de Reinette but know we won't get anything this year (partly as you don't allow fruit to develop on a new tree) as we don't have the pollinator tree.  There are four or five recommended, including the dreary but prolific Golden Delicious, but we have decided that a Granny Smith would be best - a nice acid apple with a green skin for better juice, should it do well.  We will have to wait until the Autumn to order that however.  Still here is the new star for the garden.

 

John acquired another new tree for me, and I am very pleased with it, although I have not decided what to do with it.  For the moment therefore it will sit in a pot in the tree nursery.  Isn't this the sweetest baby yew tree you have seen?  John rescued it when he was transplanting roses for a client, who was going to pave over the area where the yew had installed itself.

 

The final image for today is also a harbinger of Spring, and in purely aesthetic terms is one of the loveliest sights of the year - apricot blossom.  However when greed takes over (and the apricots from our tree are the best in the world), we have to admit that it is still about 2 or 3 weeks too early for the blossom, as while apricot blossom is frost hardy to -2 degrees, baby apricot fruits are only hardy to +1 degree, and we still have frosts due for another couple of weeks here.  So the flowers are lovely, but I suspect I am resigned to no apricot jam, ice cream, sauce, chutney, curd, apricots in syrup,frozen apricots or apricots in alcohol again this year.  With any luck, we will get our normal dozen fruit, rescued from the chickens that get eaten before we can even get back to the house.