Monthly Archives: March 2013

Stinging Nettles

29 Friday Mar 2013

Posted by in Green, Herbs, Leafy, Miscellany, Spring, Vegetables

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I don’t know that I’ve ever been more excited to eat something that I’m afraid to touch.NettlesI first heard of nettles as edibles (whee! That’s fun to say!) years ago when I was reading a book on the Irish famine.  I’m Irish-obsessed, in case you didn’t know (my daughter’s name is full-blown Irish Gaelic), and at the time I found it tragic that they ate weeds to survive when the potato crop failed.  But in a different Irish famine book (yes, obsessed), there was some mention of nettles as actually a staple food before the famine (if you don’t know Irish history, it’s tragic.  TRAGIC tragic.  The English were right bloody arseholes.) because they’re one of the richest sources of iron, vitamins A and C, and a full 10 to even 40 percent protein (and to that I say, what the what??  Vegetarians, get in here!).  They’ve also long been a staple in herbal medicine, since they supposedly are one of the best treatments for hay fever, and also for arthritis.  I was intrigued.  Nettles seemed pretty awesome.

Silica StingersExcept that they will sting you.  The taxonomy derives from the Latin for “I burn” and they’re chock full of little stingers especially on the new growth.  Standard rule of thumb for harvesting is to wear gloves, but I don’t own rubber gloves for cooking, and I was frightened.  The farmer at the market made fun of me dismissed my fears and said they weren’t that bad, but I wasn’t taken chances.  So here was my oh-so-graceful and professional method for dealing with nettles:
1. Let farmer with callused hands and scoffing bravado put them into bag.  Don’t put other veggies in same bag in case the prickers brush up against things and stick to my innocent chard or beets.
2. Remove from bag by grabbing only the bottom two inches of stem and awkwardly hold the whole bunch under the faucet to wash.  Rinse by shaking vigorously, thereby blessing the whole kitchen with nettle holy water.
3. To prepare for cooking, just as awkwardly hold giant nettle stalks over the largest frying pan I have, hot with oil, and chop off hunks with kitchen shears, trying not to get burnt by the spitting oil because the nettles weren’t really dry from the vigorous shaking and in case you haven’t heard, oil and water don’t like each other and in a hot pan they take it out on me.

Miraculously, this method worked out really, really well.

Nettle StalksThe nettles lose their stingers within about 30 seconds of cooking, so you could probably cook them, then slice them more neatly if you liked, but I’m not fussy about presentation so much, and I don’t like getting burned by hot, thornless nettles any more than I like getting stung with raw nettle thorns…  Most sources DON’T recommend my version of preparing them (I can’t imagine why) but recommend blanching instead:

  • Plunge nettles into already boiling water for about 30 seconds to 1 minute to get rid of the stingers)
  • Plunge into an ice bath to stop the cooking
  • Roll in towels or paper towels to dry them off

At this point, they can then be sauteed, sliced, frozen for later, whatever, and they’ll be a brilliant green to boot.  I 1) am lazy 2) never have ice on hand and 3) broke my favorite and largest mixing bowl last week, so plunging and bathing and creating more dishes [4) don’t have a dishwasher] is not part of my repertoire.  But if you are the opposite of me in any of those criteria, you can blanch like a normal person.

Nettle branchNettles taste a bit like the lovechild of spinach and an artichoke.  They don’t have the chalky feel of spinach and are milder in flavor, but they do have a little of the mineral/metallic/plastic tang that artichokes always seem to have.  There’s a hint of lemon in there as well, and though they’re a little grassy, they don’t in any way taste like grass or weeds – though if you buy nettles instead of picking them, make sure you pick out the long strands of actual grass that seemed to show up in all the bunches.  Nettles are toothy-leaved and roundish-stalked, not long, flat blades. (Did I, I know you’re thinking, shrug and assume those long blades were perhaps a rogue type of weird nettle stalk among my branches?  Yes, yes I did.)  Look for healthy-looking plants that have not yet begun to flower (flowering makes the leaves turn bitter), the younger the better for sweetness and mildness of flavor.  You can just use the young leaves, not the full stalk and tiny flower buds the way I did, if you want to keep the flavor as mild as possible and still reap all the nutrient benefits.  Nettle soup is a classic way to use them, or nettle pesto once they’ve been blanched, but I liked them sauteed:

Lemon-Parmesan Pasta with Stinging Nettles
Nettles
Olive Oil
Freshly grated parmesan (not the green tub)
Lemon
Garlic cloves
Spaghetti

  • Boil water and start the pasta.  Once you’ve added the noodles to the water, start your nettles:
  • In a very large pan, saute chopped nettles in roughly a tablespoon of olive oil (Use as many nettles as you like – like any leafy green, they cook down quite a bit).
  • When the nettles are wilted, squeeze the juice of one to 1 1/2 lemons into the hot pan.
  • Add a little more olive oil, along with chopped garlic (we used 2-3 cloves for just 2 1/2 people, but we love garlic).  Cook until the garlic smell hits you, just a minute or so.Lemon-Parmesan Pasta with Nettles
  • Drain the pasta, reserving about 1 tablespoon of the pasta water (you can save yourself the trouble of “reserving” boiling hot water by just draining the pasta lazily so a little of the water stays in the pot).  Add the pasta and reserved water to the frying pan, and mix.
  • Spread the pasta dish out in the frying pan to get the most surface area, and grate fresh parmesan on top.  Fold the pasta dish into the serving bowl as if it were an omelette – slide half in, then fold the other half on top – then toss immediately.  This gets the parmesan integrated into the food so you don’t just have hunks of parmesan in certain bites and none elsewhere.
  • Top with salt, pepper, and a little more parmesan if you like.

Next time, I’m making Dungeness Crab and Wild Nettle Frittata or Stinging Nettle and Asparagus Risotto.  They both sounded awesome, but I didn’t find the recipes until I’d already eaten my bunch.  But I’ll buy more.  They’re too tasty not to try again, and besides, I refuse to be intimidated by a vegetable.  I’ll brave you yet, nettle thorns!  Just not, you know, this season.

Stinging Nettle LeafTrim? You can trim a bit of the tough base and eat the rest, or trim off everything but the leaves – your choice.  But watch out for the stingers!  They’re most prevalent towards the tips, so you can grasp the bottoms without getting stung.  Use gloves, or my wimpy method as above.
Edible when raw?  No.  You will get stung, and possibly get burning welts in your mouth and throat, even if you puree them – it’s an acid that causes the burning, and it needs to be cooked to be deactivated.  Unless, of course, you’re part of a contest.
Worth the price of organic? Probably.  Though they’re basically a weed, so there’s no real reason someone should be using a bunch of sprays on them anyway, I’d still go for organic since you’re eating the leaves where the residue will sit.  If you can’t find them organic, I would definitely do the blanching technique and probably toss that water rather than using it for tea (as some people do).
Best with:  Frankly, kind of everything.  They’re such an ancient food and grow in so many places that recipes abound, from Italian pestos to Scottish soups to Indian curries.  I like to eat as seasonally as possible, so I like them with other spring flavors like young garlic ramps, lemon, fresh fennel, asparagus, peas (if you don’t hate them)…  Nettles are a bit more delicate than some other leafy greens, so I personally avoid stronger flavors like anchovies or my beloved bacon as well, but that’s only because nettles don’t need it the way bitter greens do.  It certainly would taste fine if you decided to go that route.
In Season:  In cooler climes, you can probably find them Spring into early Summer, maybe even again in fall, but here in Southern California, you’re looking at a window of just a few weeks in early Spring, so jump on them while you can.
How to Store: In the fridge, in a produce box or plastic bag,  they should keep for a week or more uncooked.  Once they’ve been blanched, use or freeze pretty quickly.
Note: If you get stung, dock leaves are the miracle cure, but since most people don’t have those lying around – make a paste of baking soda and water and apply to the area, and once the inflammation goes down, make sure there are no stingers stuck in your skin.  If so, remove with scotch tape.  There’s no danger in getting stung other than the pain, so it should go away with no ill effects in a couple of days regardless.

Eating the Vines (aka Pea Tendrils)

27 Wednesday Mar 2013

Posted by in Beans and Peas, Flowers, Green, Leafy, Miscellany, Spring, Vegetables

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True Confessions time:pea tendrilsI despise peas.  They are the eyeballs of the vegetable world, quite literally – tiny, pasty eyeballs that show up to ruin pea plantotherwise lovely dishes, like carbonara and shrimp with lobster sauce and, worst of all, the ubiquitous fish and chips “with mushy minted peas.”  How on earth does anyone think that sounds the least bit appetizing???

But I digress.  Spring as they may hearken, it will be a long time before you see a post about English peas on this blog, which is why I felt something of a personal victory in purchasing pea tendrils at the market on Sunday.

I’m not sure if they’re the tendrils of shelling peas or pod peas (HUGE difference to pea haters, by the way – snap and sugar peas are just fine, thank you), or if they just mix them all in the bin and it doesn’t matter, but to purposefully (and rather expensively) purchase things that might have some connection to the peas I deplore is dedication to experimentation, my friends.

curling tendrilsIn short: slap my ass and call my Sally.  Or whatever the expression is.

Yup, you heard it here first: they’re delightful!  I assumed they would taste sort of like peas, so I mixed in the leftover nettle greens I had on hand as well just in case I hated them, but I needn’t have, and maybe even shouldn’t have, as the two greenspea tendrils vines have very different flavors and yes, my plate seriously resembled lawn clippings.  But the pea tendrils had a delicate nuttiness, a vegetative crunch without the grassy flavor so common in most greens, an underlying mild sweetness, and tasted just simply fresh.  It was spring on a plate.  Add to that the graceful curve of the vines’ tiny fingers flash-sauteed in hot oil and fresh garlic, the bright deep green, the shy head of a white flower poking out from a tiny swaddle of leaves and the entire thing took on something of a gentile air.  I wanted to slow sip pea flowera pale sparkling wine while discussing poetry in a cool mid-afternoon sun.  (Instead of shoveling food into my face before I pass out from exhaustion and drinking my wine like it’s shots of tequila while watching DVR’ed shows with closed captioning because the kids are asleep and my house is too small?  Yes.)

Pea tendrils are the young shoots of pea plants, which makes me so happy because snow peas are one of the few things that I have grown successfully more than once, except I forget to water them and they never produce pods.  But now I can just harvest the vines! pea vine climbing The older they get, the tougher, and some people say to ditch the thicker stems, but I used everything in the bag I bought and the thicker stems were simply slightly crispier – mine were probably young enough that nothing had gotten woody or chewy yet.

Look for young, spry-looking pea shoots without wilt or yellowing.  Many people chop them before cooking, and if you purchased long strings of them, you probably should, but my farmer sold them in roughly 3-inch long pieces, and they were perfectly manageable on a fork and retained their beautiful curls on the plate – half the fun in the first place.  The best method for cooking them seems to be exactly what I found:  very hot oil, throw them in for a quick saute and a minute later add garlic until you can smell it (the whole process goes fast – maybe even just three minutes start to finish), put on a plate with salt, and enjoy.  People that like spices add red pepper flakes, too.  I tossed mine with some pasta for a vegetarian dinner.  You might also serve them with a fried or poached egg.  You see what I’m going for here?  Keep it simple, folks.  Simple and spring-like.  And if you have time for a little poetry, let me know how that goes.  I’m jealous already.

curling tendrilsTrim? Conventional wisdom says that if you can see flowers, remove the stems nearby as they’ll be too thick to be appetizing, some even include the tendrils.  I think the tendrils are pretty and had no problem with thicker stems, but if you’re eating raw I would follow the advice.
Edible when raw?  Yes, but trim off the thicker stems.
Worth the price of organic? Hard to say.  Peas are traditionally considered a “clean” food, but I think that’s because you toss the pod.  I would definitely go organic for the tendrils – they just seem to invite pesticide residue based on how they grow.
Best with:  Simple, spring-like flavors – fresh garlic, lemon, radishes, eggs, plain grains – brown rice is as nutty as I’d go; heavy starches like bulgur or barley or beans would overpower the delicacy of the shoots, in my opinion.
In Season:   Spring
How to Store: They don’t keep well.  Use the day you buy them, the next day at the most.  Store in the fridge if you’re keeping them at all, but honestly, they wilt very fast.

Brussels Sprouts

12 Tuesday Mar 2013

Posted by in Fall, Green, Miscellany, Spring, Vegetables, Winter

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This is how pathetic my life has become: when my husband goes out of town, I live it up by eating brussels sprouts.  Seriously. (Did you know there was an ‘s’ on the end?  No?  Me neither.  I mean, I know they were named for the city, but I always assumed the vegetable was “brussel sprouts.”  Ah the wonders of google’s super-condescending Did you mean brussels sprouts? as if google was channeling the annoying grammar kid in grade school…)brussels sproutsBut they’re lovely little nuggets of nutty vegetable goodness and he hates them, or did.  Conventional wisdom (read: the label on the bag when you buy them at the store) suggests popping them in the microwave for a few minutes with a hole cut in the corner for venting, and voila! Delicious veggies!  So here’s a tip: NEVER TAKE COOKING ADVICE FROM A PLASTIC BAG.  Even if it does have halved sproutfriendly-looking exclamation points and promising adjectives.

Brussels sprouts microwaved in the bag taste like, well, vegetables microwaved in a bag.  They’re sorta steamed and sorta healthy-tasting and sorta mushy and definitely edible and definitely fast, but when all is said and done they taste a little…sad.  And definitely need to be smothered in soy sauce.

Like any somewhat tough, somewhat bitter vegetable, the key to brussels sprouts is to roast them.  Sweeter roots and tubers like sweet potatoes and beets can be cut thin and survive a quick 20 minute roast and come out just fine, but with brussels sprouts?  You’ve got to roast the crap out of them.  trim

 

Cut off the ends,
trimmed v untrimmed
half sprout

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Cut in half,

 

 

 

toss with a bit of olive oil, and pop them in a 400 oven for at least 30 minutes.  About halfway through cooking time, shake the pan to toss them around a bit, and then back in they go.  When they’re done, they’ll be absolute mush in the center, which sounds really unappetizing, but what happens is that all the bitterness dissolves away and the residual sugars caramelize in the heat and the mush you’re left with is a little sweet and a little caramelly and a little nutty and tastes awesome with anything with a little strength behind its flavor – red onion, goat cheese, walnuts, steak, or just very nice sea salt.  They’re very earthy when they’re left almost whole like this, and would probably be wonderful smoked.

shredded brussels sproutsBut if you don’t have time for a long oven roast, there’s another secret that we only recently discovered that makes them even better, and way faster and easier: shred them.  If you have a food processor, run them through the slicing blade.  The resulting pieces are thin enough to pop into any pan for a quick saute or stir-fry with whatever else you’re serving, or even edible raw.  I’ve swapped them out for the kale in my raw kale salad with fantastic results, used them in place of the cabbage in a cole slaw (since brussels sprouts are really baby cabbages anyway), and tossed the shreds into a spinach salad with warm bacon dressing for a little vegetable variety.  When shredded, the natural bitterness is not nearly as noticeable, and just lends a little sharpness; if you’re cooking, you’ll get to that sweet nutty flavor ASAP instead of waiting for the slow roast.

A quick recipe:  Throw some sprouts and a shallot through the processor, and into a pan with a little olive oil.  Cook until everything is soft.  Feel free to leave it without turning much, ‘cuz you know I like my bitter things a little burned.  Splash some champagne vinegar on there if you have it, or cooking sherry, or rice vinegar, or apple cider vinegar.  Sprinkle with salt.  Eat by the panful because it really is that good.tiny cabbages

Look for tight sprouts without yellowing or curling on the outer leaves and few spots.  If you’re buying them from the market instead of the store, you may see them in their natural state, which is attached to a giant stalk, which looks bizarrely attractive but is inedible.  If you do buy them on the stalk, you can cut each sprout off with a knife, or just twist and pull each one off – the little stems that sometimes come off too are edible, but will need to be steamed or roasted very well first.  You get a lot more bang for your buck when you buy on the stalk, but a lot more work, and frankly, my fridge isn’t big enough to hold it…so no pics.  Sorry.  When we move to a bigger house and get a bigger kitchen, I swear I’ll buy a giant specimen just for you.

Trim? Yes.  Slice off the bottom brown edge.  Some people say to just put an ‘x’ in the base, but that seems like more work to me and I don’t like tough stems.  Remove any wilted leaves.
Edible when raw?  Yes, but better sliced thin or shredded first.
Worth the price of organic? Apparently not, though I would have thought otherwise.  Organic brussels sprouts are particularly hard to grow, so they’re not that common, and because each little sprout is packed so tightly, they don’t harbor a lot of bad stuff.  So give ’em a good wash and save your pennies.
Best with:  Strong flavors with a little sweetness that can stand up to the bitter earthiness but bring out the sweetness of the sprout – shallots, lemon, soft cheeses, pine nuts, walnuts, bacon/ham/piggies…  Strong flavors that have a bitter edge, like marjoram, turmeric, or even my beloved garlic, can heighten the sulfuric edge, making them taste a little like rotten eggs if you’re not careful.
In Season:  Fall through Spring.
How to Store: In the fridge, in a produce box or loosely sealed plastic bag, they should keep for ten days to 2 weeks.  If they start to yellow at the edges, peel off the outer leaves and eat within the next day or two.

Parsimony and Persimmons

02 Saturday Mar 2013

Posted by in Fruit, Miscellany, Orange, Winter, Yellow

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Alright, I took a serious long blog break.  I have unedited photos and half-written posts galore for you all, but somehow (oh, I don’t know, running a new business while parenting a 2 year old and a newborn?) I couldn’t seem to find the time to clean up the posts enough to post them.  So an entire winter has gone by full of turnips and cabbages and various hard squashes and I have left you, the four loyal readers that are out there, bereft of deliciousness.

Fuyu persimmonAnd I’d like to say, but no longer!  But alas, I tried persimmons recently, and, well, I was unimpressed.

I’ve seen persimmons at the market for years now, though before moving to California I had only seen them in still-lifes.  They look like a yellowish to deep orange tomato, or, frankly, rather like a heart ventricle.  [Can you tell my father was a doctor?]  They’re apparently quite popular in Asian and Mediterranean dishes, and that makes some sense to me, as those cuisines tend to not have overly sweet components…but I like sugar in a fruit, and persimmons ain’t it.Persimmon

There are two main kinds you’ll find widely: Fuyu and Hachiya.  The Fuyu tend to be more tomato-y looking while the Hachiya are more oblong, but be sure to ask before you buy.  Both kinds shouldn’t be eaten until they’re ripe, as I guess ‘green’ persimmons are horribly bitter (the Hachiyas are apparently so astringent that they’ll suck all the moisture out of your mouth! sounds horrid), but Fuyus will ripen to pretty firm, something like a pear when it’s just ripe but before it gets juicy, where Hachiyas should be soft and mushy before you eat.  The Fuyus can be eaten when they’re soft, too, but my guy (yeah, that’s right, I’ve got a persimmon guy) said they’re better when they’re a little firmer.  Look for green leaves, not brown, on a Fuyu, and let it get just a wee bit soft to make sure it’s ripe.  For Hachiyas, let them get mushy – go on solidity or lack thereof, not color.

Persimmon seedI didn’t expect the seeds inside, so I’m glad I sliced it open.  I went with Fuyus since spoonable fruit seems like, well, baby food, and I deal enough with that already, thank-you-very-much.  Let me be clear, persimmon lovers, before I get hate mail: I didn’t HATE the persimmon.  I just found it…useless.  It tastes something like an apple or a pear, but without the crispness or juiciness of either.  It’s basically just an innocuous fruit that’s twice the price of more familiar specimens.  That’s it.   You can eat them raw in hand like an apple or slice so you can remove the seeds, and many people like to cook them down into puddings and tarts.  I’ve seen colanders heaped with them at people’s houses and heard exclamations of excitement when the season hits, so I guess I’m turning it over to you, dear readers: What the heck do you do with these suckers to make them worth your while?  ‘Cuz I’m cheaping out.  No more persimmon experiments for me unless it’s going to be fantastic.

persimmon slicesPeel?  No, but you do want to chop off the leaves on top, and if you plan on cooking them, they’re often peeled for texture reasons.
Edible seed? No.  There will be 6 to 8, but they’re pretty big so you can pick them out easily.
Edible when raw?  Yes, though Hachiyas are more often cooked.
Worth the price of organic?  Unclear.  They’re not common enough in the U.S. to make some of the standard Dirty Dozen lists in any capacity – since apples are #1 on the list and other soft-skinned fruits rank in the top 20, I’d err on organic if you plan on eating the skin.  But they’re notably disease and pest-resistant for gardeners, so it’s quite likely that even conventional ones don’t go too heavy on the sprays.
In season: October through February.
Best with: cinnamon, ginger, nutmeg, cardamom, black pepper (warm spices); apple, pear, orange; cream in puddings, panna cottas and cheesecakes
How to Store:  On the counter until ripe, in a paper bag to speed up ripening.  Once ripe, Fuyus can go in the fridge for up to a couple of weeks; Hachiyas can go in the fridge for a few days.