If you’re picking them yourself, use thick gloves, wear a
long sleeve shirt and something to protect your legs if
you’re stepping through them. Most recipes use just two or
three cups of closely packed leaves so you don’t need a lot.
If you find a patch, avoid the edges where dogs cock their
legs, likewise avoid heavily polluted roadsides where car
fumes add things that the obligatory washing will not
remove.
For nettle recipes, look in
The Silver Spoon,
and there is a wealth of recipe offerings online. Hugh
Fearnley-Whittingstall of ex River Café fame, offers a
variation on the risotto by adding porcini, and has what
sounds like a delicious white bean and nettle soup with
cannellini beans. He also has a nettle variation on gnocchi
verde, which is traditionally made with spinach.
Nettle lore
In France, nettles are called ‘orties’, in
Italian ‘ortiche’, and in Germany ‘Brennessel’, which is
literally ‘burn nettle’. The name Gympie comes from the
aboriginal 'gimpi', meaning a 'stinging nettle bush'.
Dock plants often grow in the same spots as nettles, and
squeezing the juice from dock stalks, soothes the sting.
Wiping with a chamois like you use for car cleaning, removes
the spikes, as it acts like skin.
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‘Seizing the nettle firmly’ does work for me if you’re just
grabbing the stalks. Then the fine hairs bend over under
pressure, but you'll learn to not be tentative.
Getting rid of them is hard. In
1926, the Royal Horticultural Society's recommendation for
getting rid of nettles was to cut them down three times in
three consecutive years, after which 'they will disappear'.
The fresh leaves contain a cocktail of vitamins and
b-complexes acting as antioxidants. The
leaves contain a high content of the metals selenium, zinc,
iron, and magnesium. They contain boron, sodium,
iodine, chromium, copper, and sulfur. Crushing the woody
stalks and leaves makes stringy fibres,
that can be spun into a tough yarn, and has been used for
weaving cloth since the Bronze Age. It was widely used in
Germany
during the World Wars to make uniforms. Flax and hemp have
replaced it as a commercial plant.
The Romans used
nettles as a herbal cure for everything, and modern herbal
uses are almost as positive about the effects. The complex
chemicals in the plant have led to a number of scientific
medical developments.
But you’d be wise to take your nettle tea in moderation,
Milarepa, one of the founders of Tibetan Buddhism
drank nothing but nettle tea from when he was 45 until he
died at the age of 83. His likeness in paintings and statues
is always depicted with his skin as being green, and
apparently it really was.
Cooking nettles at Sage Restaurant > |
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