Biting back – eat your stinging nettles.
Well, we are. Notoriously garden and
lawn invasive, nettles are also sneaking back into the kitchen and
on restaurant menus. Simon Thomsen’s SMH review of Icebergs
Dining Room & Bar a few months ago mentioned chef Roberto
Marchetti’s, “classic
stracciatella chicken broth with stinging nettles and
cognac”. Maggie Beer whipped up
nettles for Simon Bryant
recently on their TV show and in
our regional Canberra
restaurant
Sage, (SMH
Good Food Guide
one hatted), chef Thomas Moore has
long had nettles on his winter menu, and he currently uses
them in a risotto with mascarpone to accompany slow braised
lamb (See our story and recipe).
So are
nettles likely to be the next food fad like rocket / roquette?
Probably not. We
may
have introduced
(unwittingly) some of the nettle
varieties, but we’ve never adopted the culture of eating
them that goes with it. Considering that a few minutes
cooking removes any sting from the nettle and leaves a wild
green that tastes as good as, and is less bitter than
spinach, that is surprising.
The recent English translation of
the
1950 Italian cookbook
Il cucchiaio d’argento
- The Silver Spoon, was
criticised for
leaving out some of the older traditional ingredients in
it’s desire to be accepted by modern cooks.
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It has
however, three nettle recipes presented rather
matter-of-factly with no handling warnings. There’s one for
risotto, one for a nettle soup, and a potato and nettle
gnocchi. If you are Italian (or French) you are expected to
know this vegetable well. I’ve searched my old Australian
cookbooks and I haven’t found even a mention of cooking
stinging nettles, which suggests a real ‘nettle culture’
difference.
Australian
food
historian and blogger, Janet Clarkson points out that “It is
not surprising that there are almost no recipes for it in
cookbooks – if one could afford to buy a cookbook, and had
an education that enabled one to read it, presumably one
would not be eating wayside weeds. Alexis Soyer, the most
famous chef of the Victorian era did however include
instructions for cooking nettles it in his Shilling Cookery
for the People, published in 1854.”
So the British
have been eating nettles for a long time, but never passed
that tradition on to us in the colonies. With no knowledge
of how to use them, it makes it harder for Australian cooks
to try them.
And you should try
them. You won’t find them in the markets here as you do in
Europe, but with a few requests, you’re sure to
find a greengrocer who can source them for you.
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