Hugh Fearnley-Whittingstall was extolling the virtues of nettles as a vegetable in the Grauniad Weekend magazine recently. TBH declared herself willing to give it a go. The boys weren’t interested in going for a walk, but when I rebranded the idea as going foraging, B jumped at the chance. The sun was shining, but there was a fierce and bitter wind blowing, (although it wasn’t as cold as it had been the day before when we visited Skipton for fish and chips on our way home from York and it was sleeting). We didn’t need to walk very far, since we have a plentiful supply of ground elder in our own garden. We had to go a little further afield for our nettles.
We were soon in the kitchen rinsing a large colander full of greenery (more ground elder then nettles). We cooked them in the drops of water retained from their wash, then added fried onions and garlic and a generous pat of butter.
And…..?
Well – surprisingly tasty. I suspect that it was actually the ground elder which was the real winner – a pleasant tangy flavour, far preferable to spinach as far as the nippers were concerned. (Although the novelty value helped.)
This is a very timely post for Easter Sunday as I’m sat eating Creme Eggs and not even planning on eating anything green for the rest of the day.
I’ve thought about trying a green food only diet (as I’ve thought about trying most diets at one time or another. At the moment I’m not eating between snacks). It wouldn’t be all bad: pistachios, pistachio ice-cream, lime jelly, green jelly-babies, green pasta, green smarties, Green and Black’s chocolate….and that’s before resorting to food colouring!
Remember those carefree days when we thought adding green food colouring to other peoples dinners was funny.
Did we stop finding it funny? When was that? Are you pretending to be all grown-up and sensible all of a sudden?