Exmoor Lockdown Diary 26 - More Wild Food - Nettle, Wild Garlic and Pea Risotto
Pea, nettle and wild garlic risotto
A surprising number of people have contacted me after I put up a Facebook showing photos of nettles and wild garlic which I then made into a risotto.
The pea, nettle and wild garlic rice dish was delicious and easy to make. I collect just the tops of the nettles - by which I mean the top two leaves. Obviously I wear gardening gloves for that job, but you don’t have to - the tips don’t really bite if you just pick them between finger and thumb.
When I made the risotto the other night I simply washed the wild leaves well in a colander then put them in a non-stick pan with a lid and cooked them down with just a sprinkling of water. Once they were completely wilted you may as well have been looking at cooked spinach. I squeezed this hard, so all the fluid came out - then put it on the chopping board to cut it down and down with a knife. This is preferable to put it into a blender because you don’t really just want an amorphous paste - far better to have your risotto flecked with little bits of green.
Then I simply made a risotto the normal way, adding these veg and the peas towards the end of cooking. But as an added extra I did finish the dish off by putting it into a hot, smokey Morso pizza oven for the final few minutes - the savoury smokiness this gives a final melting knob of butter puts the dish into another realm.
We had belly pork to go with the risotto
As for the the details of knocking up a quick wild garlic pesto of my own… Basically what you need is a fistful of herbs (just the wild garlic or you could add other herbs - a mix of whatever’s growing in the garden), a smaller amount of nuts (I am not that fond of pine-nuts so tend to go for a few walnuts, cobnuts or blanched skinned almonds), some hard cheese (parmesan, but some hard English cheeses like a very mature unpasteurised cheddar can be fantastic), a clove of garlic (not with the wild garlic pesto) and a squeeze of lemon juice.
These ingredients are all placed into the mini-food-processor I bought specially for the pesto-making task, and whizzed with some good glugs of quality extra virgin olive or rapeseed oil. If the cheese you’ve used hasn’t been salty enough, you can always bung in a big pinch of Cornish sea-salt after tasting.
And that’s it. Within seconds you will have a small cup or bowlful of the closest your garden will ever get to producing rocket-fuel - at least, in the flavour stakes…
The mini-blender I use for pestos and salsa
A spoonful or two thrown in to any kind of fresh cooked pasta creates an instant and delicious lunch, but you can also use it as a side sauce for meats or fish or as a marinade. Stir a little into a spring vegetable risotto and you will have a vegetarian dish worthy of an award winning restaurant, add it to soups or stews and you can transform the weary and overcooked into something that fresh and full of zing.
In fact, that is the word: homemade pesto can add zing to half the savoury dishes you’ll ever make - it’s just a mystery we Brits never stumbled across the idea before.
Alternatively you can make this nettle salsa….
Nettle salsa
50g Nettles
17g Flat leaf parsley
25g Gherkin
25g Capers
15g Anchovy
½ tbsp Dijon mustard
45g Rapeseed oil
45g White wine vinegar
Salt to taste
Place all the ingredients into your blender and blitz until emulsified, check the seasoning and leave to one side.
Just one other - thing - we’ve been doing a lot of gardening recently - like everyone else who has a garden during this lockdown - but today we resorted to our ultimate gardening technique - which was the big burn….
