Country & Coast: Countryside freebies are as delicious as they are healthy

Cooking the first nettle soup of the year is usually a spontaneous event. It is tricky to say precisely when the first nettles of spring are ready for picking, so when they are unexpectedly found during a walk in March, it is necessary to make do with whatever ingredients are at home to complete the dish.
Nettles are a tasty source of sustenance for both wildlife species and humans.  Picture by Mitchell Self.Nettles are a tasty source of sustenance for both wildlife species and humans.  Picture by Mitchell Self.
Nettles are a tasty source of sustenance for both wildlife species and humans. Picture by Mitchell Self.

Thus, on the beautiful Sunday afternoon we have just had I found myself gathering nettle tops near Bingley in West Yorkshire, surprised at how tall some of them were on their stalks this early in the season.

Picking nettles is always a delicate operation, but my waterproof gloves - usually at the bottom of my rucksack on such glorious days - provided ample protection against stings. Within a quarter of an hour I had harvested enough nettles to provide around 100 grams of leaves.

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Back home, I added a few kitchen staples. In this case the additions included a sliced onion, chopped celery stick and clove of garlic all lightly sautéd in butter, plus a boiled potato used as thickener and a litre of vegetable stock from a couple of good quality cubes.

The nettles needed just five or ten minutes simmering in the company of the above before the whole thing was whizzed up with a stick blender.

To finish it off, I swirled a spoon of crème fraîche into each bowl and followed it with a few scrapes of nutmeg and snipped garden chives. The result was absolutely delicious.

Nettles are without doubt the best free food in the British countryside, and are found just about everywhere.

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Phosphate and nitrogen-rich soil is the main requirement for their growth, and there is plenty of that thanks to the run-off from frequently manured fields of livestock.

The Romans are known to have used nettle leaves as a green vegetable, always blanching them in boiling water to neutralise the cocktail of stinging chemicals that includes histamine, acetylcholine and formic acid.

I am not a food historian, so I don’t know if they were the first to use nettle leaves instead of basil in a British version of pesto. It certainly works, although blanching them is still necessary as well as squeezing out as much water as possible before adding the other ingredients of pine nuts - hazel nuts make a flavoursome alternative - parmesan, garlic and a judicious drizzle of rapeseed oil.

In some posh eateries you will find deep-fried nettle leaves scattered on eggs benedict, and at the other end of the scale they helped people survive the Irish Potato Famine.

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The health benefits of nettle leaves are well known, being high in iron and vitamin A, and have long been used by herbalists to treat anaemia.

Nettles are also the food plant of several species of butterfly, including the comma, small tortoiseshell, red admiral and peacock, however, thankfully there are so many nettles in the countryside that you should not feel guilty about taking some home from a walk. Just be sure to remember to carry those important protective gloves and a bag.

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