Exmoor Lockdown Diary 5 - Nettle Super-Food This Mother's Day
A truly glorious day on Exmoor, and what do I get this sunny Sunday? A press release from Exmoor National Park Authority saying the hills are besieged with visitors.
You can’t blame people for wanting to get out during this lockdown - but what happened to the government’s plea for people to stay away form one another. Apparently car parks at the more famous spots on the moors are crowded and local village cafes and pubs which have been doing a takeaway service have had to close because so many people are turning up and queueing.
This normally empty road on the top of Exmoor is busy with tourists this ‘lockdown Sunday’
Plus, holiday cottages in the national park are being let like proverbial hotcakes as people flee the cities. In one way, you can’t blame folk - but of course it totally overloads the tiny local shops and services we have down here that are trying to help their communities as best they can.
I guess all that might be a little different IF this Mother’s Day was producing the West Country’s default weather - ie thick cloud and rain.
And I have to admit the glorious weather has taken me out - but only to my garden. For two reasons other than to soak up some sunshine…
One is that I am going to pick nettles to make soup - which is truly delicious if you know how to do it (see below)…
The other has been a trip up to the old 1990s holiday chalet at the top of the garden which was wrecked in recent storms. Huge shame - I loved that old chalet. We had electricity put into it many years ago and it happened to be where we kept our freezer.
I had assumed since the roof collapsed that it was kaput. But I crawled in among the fallen roof beams this morning and found it was, miraculously, still working. So with a great deal of effort, we rescued it and hauled it down through the garden for a clean-up before we take it inside where I hope it will do service.
Rescued empty freezer from storm-damaged building in the garden - needs filling
If only we had some food to put in it!
Just a week or so ago, thanks to the collapsed chalet, I cancelled a box of Exmoor beef which I had on order from a farmer friend. I wish very much now that I hadn’t - 150-quid’s worth of prime grass-fed beef would have kept us fed for months.
Which brings me to another photos here - my Japanese kamado barbecue happily doing its thing for the first time in months.
Not because the weather has been rubbish - but because I haven’t had any charcoal. Now I need to see if I can get some ordered locally, because the last bag (found in the corner of an outdoor cupboard) has finally gone up in smoke.
If all else fails, though, it will be nettle soup that keeps us going.
What a fantastic standby during a crisis - because if there’s one thing we are never going to run out of in West Somerset, it’s nettles.
The first thing people ask is, does it sting your mouth? Not a bit. I think of nettles as a slightly interesting version of spinach. And it’s just as good for you, if not more so - full of vitamins and minerals. I read that nettles have diuretic properties that help eliminate waste products, especially excess acid, from the body.
The super-weed is good for arthritis, gout and as a general blood purifier. It is also high in iron, calcium, potassium, phosphorus, silica, chlorophyll and vitamin C and D.
And get this… The super-weed is supposed to be really good for respiratory problems - so why not give it a go in the times when this particular medical problem is at the top of everyone’s mind?
I put on some thick gardening gloves - although this isn’t 100 per cent necessary because what you do is pinch out the very tips, by which I mean the two small leaves right at the top of the nettle. You can actually do this without gloves, but why risk a sting? The little buggers hurt at this time of year.
The thing to do is prepare a basic “soffrito” by gently frying what the Italians call the Holy Trinity of finely diced onions, celery and carrots. You only need a small handful so you are not majorly robbing your vital veg store on this. I add one or two finely diced potatoes at the end of the frying before pouring in, say, a pint of vegetable or chicken stock, or just water would do if you have anything else.
Bring this to the boil then chuck in the nettles which you will have washed carefully in a colander. I do the cooking in my electronic pressure cooker because you can shut down the lid and cook under pressure for ten minutes which allows almost all the minerals and vitamin to be kept locked into the food.
I then stir in a small pot of single cream or some full fat milk and simmer for five montes before blitzing with a hand blender. You can play around with flavourings at this point. Black pepper goes well, as does a grating of nutmeg.
If I’m in the mood, I go one step up from the hand-blender and use my extremely powerful Heston Blumenthal “bullet-style” machine which nukes everything you put in it to such fine particles you think that a soup like this must contain loads of double cream.
It’s what professional chefs do when they serve this little amuse-bouche sous in espresso shot cups.
In the posh restaurant you think: “Blimey - this must be made with the richest Jersey clotted cream…” But really the ultra-fine blending just introduces a lot of air into the liquid so you get what is almost a light suspension. Smooth, healthy, and delicious.
Definitely go for a big dollop of the wild garlic pesto I mentioned in a Lockdown Diary the other day. Stir this into a bowl of nettle soup as you serve - or fleck the whole served soup with fragments of crisp fried bacon.
This is cheap nosh, we’re talking about.
In fact, it doesn’t come much cheaper. For two of us I’d use one carrot, one onion, one stick of celery, a knob of butter for the initial frying, a tiny level teaspoon of vegetable bullion power and half a pint of the cheapest single cream or some old leftover full cream milk.
Feeding two for less than 50 pence during a lockdown. Can’t be a bad idea…
