Nettle Soup

Irish Restaurants seldom serve Irish food, so your only hope is to make it yourself. Nettle Soup is a classic, traditional and delicious dish, cheap and easy to make. Young nettles are plentiful and easily found by even the most reticent of foragers.

Wild Nettles (Urtica Doica) growing in County Kilkenny

Pick young nettle tops, using rubber gloves, you can pick them without gloves if you know how to grab the stems and leaves, without getting stung.

Apologies to Darina Allen for corrupting her recipe.

RECIPE
Large bunch nettles
Tablespoon of butter
3 shallots or 1 onion or leeks
1 medium Golden Wonder Potato
1 litre good quality homemade chicken stock

Freshly picked Nettles (Urtica Doica)

Melt the butter until bubbling, add finely chopped shallots and well diced Golden Wonder potato, add a little salt and pepper. Cover and cook over a low heat until the potato is soft. Add the stock and simmer for a couple of minutes, then add the chopped nettles, cook for another couple of minutes.

Nettle Soup

Puree the mixture in a blender until smooth (originally, it would have put through a hair sieve) and reheat before serving. A delicious Irish country soup, the traditional recipe would not have used potato, an introduced species - oatmeal or some other cereal would have been used instead.

According to Ray Mears and Gordon Hillman, Stinging Nettles (Urtica Doica) are a very good source of protein, as well as vitamins C & B, calcium, potassium iron, phosphorous, magnesium etc. So, give it a go...

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Nettle and Barley Pudding - An Experiment

It is time to go foraging for Nettles, they are now in season, here in County Kilkenny.

Bunch of Freshly Picked Nettles

Best eaten tender, soon after emerging from their winter slumber.  When picking them, wear rubber gloves, so you will not be stung. This recipe calls for a decent bunch. Make sure they are growing in a spot where they have not been sprayed, away from a road and preferably where there are no livestock grazing.

Added ingredients: leeks, sorrel, watercress, thyme & chives

This recipe is based on an ancient type of pudding, commonly eaten in the past. 

Puddings, nowadays, apart from blood puddings, are usually regarded as sweet dishes, but this was not always the case. Originally, they were placed in an animal's stomach, like the modern Scottish haggis. From the seventeenth century, puddings, generally savory, wrapped in a cloth and thus cooked. Later, in second half of the nineteenth century, they were placed in a pudding basin and steamed. 

Barley and Nettle Pudding being placed in Lamb Stock

RECIPE

Lamb, ham or chicken stock

Barley (pearl barley was used in this case)

Bunch of nettles

Bunch of watercress

Bunch of sorrel

2 leeks

Chives

1 wild garlic leaf

Sprigs of thyme

Salt

The barley was soaked before hand, in lamb stock and then drained (there is a similar version of this recipe, that uses barley flour). The greens were finely chopped, added to the barley, along with some sea salt, mixed together.  Some of the larger leaves were held aside and used to line the pudding cloth, and to wrap the pudding. It was then tied up and cooked in a saucepan of lamb stock for an hour and a half.

Nettle and Barley Pudding

VERDICT

The pudding should have been opened, once it had cooled, but being in a hurry to taste it, it was opened while still steaming - so it lost its shape! It was wonderfully tasty, and was eaten with some locally produced lamb. It is likely that in medieval times, all sorts of exotic foreign spices (of which they were so fond), would have been added - by those who could afford it. 

Next time, I am going to try the barley flour version, it is an inspirational dish: traditional, healthy, cheap, local and seasonal. 

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Real Mint Sauce for Easter Lamb

Have you ever gone out to dinner, ordered lamb and mint sauce? The lamb was delicious, but the mint sauce was a disappointing nasty, vinegary mess, out of some mass produced jar - sadly, this is a common scenario for which there is absolutely no need.

Homemade Mint Sauce made from a mixture of Applemint and Spearmint.

Mint is one of the easiest herbs to grow in County Kilkenny, so much so, it can become a weed in the garden, if not kept under control. Spear Mint (Mentha Speicata) is used here, along with Apple Mint (Mentha Sauveolens), both can be grown in an old pot or bucket.

Mint Sauce is the simplest of sauces to make, there is no excuse for not giving it a go. It is a very good example of how one can be thrifty and still enjoy good food, by complimenting it with a quality sauce, at virtually no cost.

RECIPE
Pick a bunch of young sprigs of mint
Tear the leaves from the stems
Chop the leaves, finely
Place in bowl, cover with boiling water
Add teaspoon of sugar, vinegar to taste and a pinch of salt.
Leave to cool and serve.

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Sea Kale in Season

SEA KALE (Crambe Maritima). 
Available from Glasrai and Goodies in Gowran.

A native Irish plant that grows on shingle beaches - so not to be found in County Kilkenny. It has become quite rare in the wild, so be sure to use only cultivated plants.

Sea Kale ready to be picked.

In prehistoric times, before the domestication of cereal crops, the root was an important source of carbohydrates, for the hunter-gatherer. The whole plant can be eaten, but usually it is the blanched young shoots, with their slightly nut like flavour, that are most sought after. In the past, shingle was heaped up around wild plants, growing along the edges of such beaches. This had the effect of blanching the plants.

Peron, J.Y., Gouget, M., Declercq, B., 1991 in their Composition nutritionnelle du Crambe Maritime reveal that Sea Kale not only tastes great but has a high protein and fibre content, a high quantity of potassium/low sodium and excellent calcium/phosphorus ratio, and contains good vitamins such as thiamine (Vitamin B1).

Freshly picked Sea Kale, showing blanched shoots and unblanched leaves.

In 1827, John M'Craith, a Kilkenny nurseryman, advertised Sea Kale plants for sale, alongside "Stove and Greenhouse Exotics". In 1834, specimens were successfully exhibited, from the Bishop of Ossory's gardens, by Mr. Monk (who, presumably, was the Bishop's head gardener), at the Kilkenny Horticultural Society's show.

It was a great favourite of the Victorians and Edwardians, but the vogue for Sea Kale declined with the demise of the walled vegetable garden.

Cooked blanched Sea Kale (top) and cooked unblanched Sea Kale leaves (below).

HOW TO COOK

Drop into boiling salted water and simmer for 5 to 10 minutes, until just tender. Drain pour melted butter over and sprinkle a little chopped parsley and serve. 

Young, unblanched leaves are pleasant to eat, if cooked in a similar manner, but lack the subtle nuances of the paler shoots.

Such a delicious vegetable deserves greater recognition, easily cooked, is worthy of further culinary exploration. 

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St. Patrick's Day Salad

A WILD & SEASONAL, GREEN SALAD FOR ST. PATRICK'S DAY

Watercress, Sorrel and Wild Garlic Salad.

A salad composed of plants readily available in St. Patrick's time, that have would have been well known by anyone living in Ireland, in the 5th century AD. We forget that so many of our common 21 st century vegetables and salad plants are comparatively recent introductions to Ireland and would have been unknown to our ancestors.

The days are lenghtening, tender wild spring greens, packed with vitamins and other goodies are emerging. The slugs have beaten me to the sorrel, but there are still enough new shoots for a tasty St. Patrick's Day salad.

Wild Kilkenny Garlic

The young, wild garlic (Allium ursinum) grows in profusion in County Kilkenny, in hedgerows and on the woodland edges. Look out for the distinctive garlic smell, as you crush it under foot. A few well chosen leaves is all that is required, or alternatively break up the leaves and rub the inside of the salad bowl with them.

Sorrel

Sorrel (Rumex acetosa) , like spinach, contains oxalic acid, so it is best eaten when young. It has a slightly bitter but pleasant taste. Sorrel can be used in sauces and soups. Not to be confused with the shamrock-like leafed wood sorrel (Oxalis acetosella)), which has a similar flavour. 

Watercress

Be careful when picking watercress (Nasturtium officinale), make sure that your source is a clean one, watercress can act as a host to Fasciola Hepatica more commonly known as liver fluke. The water in the watercourse, should be clean, fast flowing and away from animals. Boiling will kill the fluke larvae, but it is best avoided, if you suspect the watercress might be infected. It is easily grown at home under controlled conditions.

St. Patrick's Day Salad on a bed of Shamrock

RECIPE
For a St. Patrick's Day Salad, pick the young leaves (go easy on the garlic - unless you like a very strong flavour), wash them well and place in the salad bowl and add a little honey and some apple verjus and you have a salad that St. Patrick would recognise.

Email: kilkennyseakale@gmail.com