long overdue

well, that resolution i made not to leave it so long between blog posts no matter how busy i was in the garden? it didn't work, did it? i have to say work has played a big part in it, my shifts have doubled in both length and intensity with the good weather, and schlepping up and down the flight of stairs to the beer garden carrying massive plates has ensured i have little to no energy for anything more strenuous than lifting a glass of near-frozen chenin blanc to my face of a night. i can't complain, my buns of steel and t-shirt tan will be remarkable come july if this keeps up. still, between pouring pints and wielding a watering can, i have found time to be in the kitchen, making, admittedly, incredibly minimum effort food that requires very little supervision, in pretty big batches so that i can be outside as long as possible.

now, i got myself back on the breadmaking wagon, caving to ed's continuous suggestion that i should try my hand at focaccia. we've discussed in many a time, but i had, thus far, resisted; my babysteps approach to breadmaking didn't factor in different types of bread until i'd mastered the basic technique (cue master baker joke here for those of us who refuse to get their minds out of the gutter). you don't need me to tell you the recipe, because i used precisely the same one as ed, as it also appears in my copy of the river cottage bread handbook. i chose to do focaccia purely for it's low maintenace qualities; it needs fuck all shaping, and if i'm to make hay while the sun shines i haven't got time to poach bagels, or mollycoddle loose ciabatta dough, so focaccia seemed like a good variant to play with. i got a good result, as you can see:

i used rosemary from my garden. i had to replace my rosemary plant after the last one got decapitated by a flying fence panel some time in january, which was gutting; my rosemary plant is so new that i was tempted to sub in lemon thyme while i let it acclimatise but in the end i stuck with the basics. the olive oil i used was a present from one of my regulars, bought back from the south of france in an old wine bottle, pressed by one of his neighbours there. it's these little touches i like about cooking. knowing where my ingredients come from and letting them tell ther own story is a part of the process for me. i was re-reading appetite by nigel slater the other day; and he rather exasperatingly pours scorn on people who like to make absolutely everything from scratch; insinuating they've something to prove. i have a feeling he's since changed his mind, having written a two volume series on plot-to-plate cooking, but it still makes me angry to read shit like that. i have the time to put in the extra leg work on my food, and i think it makes it more pleasurable to eat. i don't do it to impress; but if it does impress, well, result. anyway, tangent aside, the focaccia was excellent, and very well received both by my boss (who sulked last time i made bread because he didn't get any), and my american septagenarian friend ed (he of the olive oil from france, no less). it was definitely different from working with normal bread dough; and i have to say i wasn't a fan of the lack of resistance in kneading, but as it requires no shaping and no fuss it's a pretty easy bread to make between planting up pots of veg.

the other things i've made are more directly concerned with the garden. i am a big fan of multitasking, so have been zealously reading up on what weeds i can put to good use as i clear my garden of thigh height specimens. one of the most well-known edible intruders is nettles. i hesitate to say intruders because i have developed an interest in a movement called permaculture, which started in australia and is a contraction of 'permanent agriculture'. it's basis premise is to create symbiotic environments that support and sustain themselves, and it encompasses everything from companion planting to creating greywater usage systems and favouring perennial plants over annuals where possible. what has this got to do with nettles, i hear you ask? well, aside from localized weeds allowing you to determine your soil type very easily and pick plants that will thrive more intelligently, nettles are an amazingly multipurpose plant, and i am sorely tempted to leave a patch of my growing space purely for them.

now is apparently the perfect time of year to eat nettles; the spring shoots are really what you should use for cooking, as the older leaves can be somewhat tough. i made two things with my nettles, a pesto, and a soup. this was my first time cooking with them so i went with tried and tested ideas for their use, wanting very much to get a feel for what they were like as an ingredient. i read several recipes and then just sort of winged it as i went along, so here are my results:

nettle pesto

so i basically eyeballed this one. i had about 100g of nettles (a lightly packed food processor's worth), about 25g vegetarian parmesan, two cloves of garlic, a slug of olive oil (probably about fifty ml), a good handful of pine nuts, and a squeeze of lemon juice. i just blended that to a coarse paste, popped into a container, and put a layer of oil over the top; and that'll sit happily in the fridge for a month, if it lasts that long.

it's really good, actually. i tried it on pasta, first, and the heat of the pasta gave the nettles a slightly mushroomy note, which was nice. but where this stuff seems to really shine is paired with mild cheese like wensleydale, especially on homemade spelt rolls. i think if i were making this again i might be tempted to pop in a few sprigs of mint, as the nettles have a really delicate flavour. i might thin some down and use it to dress my first garden salad when my radishes, broad beans and lettuces have come to fruition, as i have a feeling that will be really good, if not necessarily traditional spring salad practice.

okay, so i also made soup. and it seems like there are as many nettle soup recipes as there are cooks, so i'm going to add mine into the mix:

kirsty's nettle soup

okay, so you need about 200g of young nettle leaves, which for the record is about this much: they obviously need to be thoroughly washed. you also need a knob of butter, a medium onion, two medium potatoes, a clove or two of garlic, a litre of veg stock, and a dollop or two of creme fraiche.

so what i did was soften the onions and crushed garlic in the butter on a low heat, and then added the peeled, diced potatoes and let them soften for about ten minutes, not letting anything catch or colour. i popped the nettles in the pan, let them lightly wilt, and added the stock, simmering until the potatoes were tender. i liquidized it with a stick blender (my new favourite toy), and added a dollop or two of creme fraiche and stirred through.

i bunged it in a bowl, finished with another swirl of creme fraiche and some black pepper (and the last of my focaccia), like so:

as you can see, it went a spring-y jade green (incidentally the exact same colour of the nail varnish i was sporting at the time, models own's grace green, which is a nifty little imitation of last year's chanel spring effort, fashion fans). it tasted like a milder version of spinach, and was immensely satisfying to eat. if i made it again, i'd probably add a glass of dry white at the same time as the nettles, because while there's a place for virtuous vegetable cookery, it's nowhere near my kitchen, and i'm madly in love with the marriage of greens, white wine and cream. so, nettle picking is now on my mandatory spring activities list, and the beauty of it is that wherever i live, there will always be nettles.

so next year's nettle projects might be more ambitious; i fancy learning the art of home brewing next year, so nettle beer might be on the cards. the best bit about eating the nettles was the satisfying feeling of both clearing space in my garden, getting something for free, and trying an ingredient i had never worked with before. also, where i only used the shoots, i cut down the rest of the nettle plants and made nettle manure for my plants. because permaculture is about giving back to the environment as much (if not more, in the early stages of establishing a system) as you take out. lovely.