Stinging Nettles

Do you see them? Do you see the little hairs that sting you with their acid? I first encountered these little buggers when we had recently moved to the Northwest. Playing disc golf one day, I ignorantly waltzed into the dense shrubbery in my shorts to find my Frisbee. Suddenly I felt like there were biting ants attacking me, burning up and down my legs. They didn't have these nasty plants in California where I had grown up! Old folklore says to rub the fronds of a neighboring fern on the nettle "bites" to quiet the burn, but whatever it was, the sting eventually faded away. I learned my lesson about nettles that day, but you can imagine my surprise when, not too long after my "nettle incident," I opened up my menu all those years ago at the local establishment Le Gourmand to find Nettle Soup as a specialty!

After the chef's reassurance that the stinging part of the nettles disappeared with cooking, we tried the soup and were pleasantly surprised by its subtle grassy flavor, not to mention its completely sting-free texture. With that soup in mind, I procured a bag of nettles from Foraged and Found Edibles last weekend (after first getting over my excitement that one of my favorite vendors had returned to the market!). The nettle plants grow wild all over the Northwest and other temperate climates, and their fresh, young leaves are best early in the spring. As you can imagine, washing them creates quite a dilemma. The small leaves, all tightly bunched into a plastic bag, are just waiting to get you, reaching out with their hairy antennae. For once feeling slightly afraid of my food, I turned the plastic bag inside out and used it as a glove to wash them in a bucket of water. Although they did have some rather thick and fibrous-looking stems, I wasn't about to pick through them. Rather, I just dumped the whole lot into an already boiling pot of stock with some shallots and garlic in it. I then boiled the leaves for about 15 minutes, blended it all up and then strained it. Much of the green roughage didn't make it through the strainer, so the resulting soup was significantly paler in color than its original ingredients. No matter, though. A splash of cream, a little salt and pepper, and the nettle soup was perfect. Uniquely grassy and herbaceous in flavor, I can now say that nettles are my friend.